Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

HULL TIDAL SURGE BARRIER [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to empower the Yorkshire River Authority to construct and operate a barrier, with movable gates, across the river Hull in the city and county of Kingston upon Hull and in connection therewith to execute other works and to acquire lands, it is expedient to authorise any increase in the sums payable out of moneys provided by Parliament under Section 55 of the Land Drainage Act 1930, Section 38 of the Land Drainage Act 1961 and Section 37 of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968.—[Mr. Hawkins.]

PETITION

Beam Trawling (South Coast)

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: I beg to ask leave to present a petition.
To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
The Humble Petition of the Fishermen of Lymington and Keyhaven and District, and Others Showeth:
That since September 1st the urgent conservation of Britain's Inshore Fishing Grounds is causing grave concern to her Inshore Fishermen and People, when other nations because

of feared scarcity of fish stocks are increasing their limits. They therefore require Her Majesty's Government to make conservation their first priority within the 12-mile Territorial Waters Limit along the South Coast, by approving to ban all Beam Trawling except by local Licence through local Sea Fisheries Committees to meet area needs, combined with a total band of the use of weighty chain nets, devastatingly destructive where sole and plaice are caught. With the present inadequate six old 15-knot Patrol Protection vessels for the whole of Britain's coast Her Majesty's Government has no means of enforcing future essential conservation of Britain's own fish supplies for the nation.
British Fishermen therefore claim protection from Her Majesty's Government for the full implementation of the clause against intruders in the Convention on the Continental Shelf of 1958, which the United Kingdom and every EEC country has ratified and the International Court of Justice has adjudicated on in 1969. Under which convention British citizens have the exclusive right to exploit such fishing grounds as crab and lobster beds within the new natural boundaries of Great Britain within the outer limits of the Continental Shelf.
Therefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House do most urgently debate the conservation of Britain's Inshore Fishing Grounds and do give protection to British Inshore Fishermen for the full implementation of the Clause against intruders in the Convention on the Continental Shelf of 1958, and that your Honourable House do approve to ban Beam Trawling along the South Coast except by local Trawl Permits to meet area needs and that your Honourable House do enforce existing Regulations for conservation by establishing a fast adequate Naval Patrol System competent to protect all areas under their control and supervision. And urges your Honourable House to call for an immediate Debate on these matters.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
This petition is signed by 41 inshore fishermen in my constituency which, although numerically not very large, represents a very significant group of fishermen in that part of England, and I hope that the House will give urgent consideration to their petition.

To lie upon the Table.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Food Prices

Mr. Carter: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what has been the percentage increase in cost of food since June 1970.

Mr. William Price: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by what percentage food prices have risen since June 1970.

Mr. Skinner: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by how much food prices have increased since June 1970.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Joseph Godber): Between 16th June 1970 and 12th December 1972, the latest date for which information is available, the food index rose by 24·9 per cent.

Mr. Carter: Is the Minister aware that that is the most appalling answer on this subject ever given in the House of Commons, when set against the Government's policies which restrict wage increases? Is not the Minister aware that until the Government take measures to control food prices their efforts to control inflation will come to naught?

Mr. Godber: I recognise that there is a substantial and serious rise, and I have never sought to deny that. But these rises, as the hon. Gentleman knows, are due to conditions outside the control of the Government. They are due almost entirely to increases in world prices of meat and cereals. That is the reason for them.

Mr. Evelyn King: Will the Minister say by what percentage the cost of living, as opposed to the cost of food, rose? Will he also say by what percentages in the same period earnings and retirement pensions rose?

Mr. Godber: The important comparison is between earnings on the one hand and other rises on the other. Earnings during the same period rose by

34 per cent. and pensions by 35 per cent. These figures, serious as they are, show that the buying capacity of all sections of the community is higher now than it was in 1970.

Mr. William Price: Is it not a strange fact that these figures are more than two months out of date? Is the reason, possibly, that the Minister is afraid to admit to the House that the figure is now well over 25 per cent? Is he proud of the fact that the greatest achievement of this Government is to force some sections of the community to eat horsemeat and grey squirrel, and will he say what other effects the Government's policy will have in the next few months?

Mr. Godber: I have never been afraid to address the House upon any matter—certainly not on this matter. There has been no change in the arrangements about publication of figures; they have been published in exactly the same way as previously. I agree that the next month is bound to see some additional further increase—we all know this, and I have never sought to conceal it from the House.
But when the hon. Gentleman goes on to make extravagant claims about what people are purchasing, the truth is that they are purchasing more good quality food now than they did when the Labour Government were in office.

Mr. Farr: Will my right hon. Friend urge the Chancellor of the Exchequer to remove purchase tax altogether on food products, since this would have the effect of bringing down the index of food prices by no fewer than two points?

Mr. Godber: My hon. Friend will recall that purchase tax and SET will disappear when VAT is introduced—in fact, the total incidence of taxation on food will be less after 1st April than it is now because the effect of the disappearance of SET will be to reduce the imposition of tax on food. Therefore, there will be the beneficial effect of some reduction in total taxation.

Mr. Skinner: Is the Minister aware that the figures show that the biggest upset faced by old-age pensioners this winter is not the dispute involving the gas workers but old people's inability to buy food at prices they can afford? Is it not a strange state of affairs when the


Minister urges housewives to boycott beef, chicken and fish and yet beef prices continue at the same level? What does he expect people to eat—frogs legs?

Mr. Godber: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. I have never advised the housewife to boycott any product. [Interruption.] No. I have advised her to judge for herself about which is the best buy. The figures show that the purchase of better food by pensioners has increased and that the situation is better than it was in 1970. The food survey shows that pensioners' purchases of high-protein food are well up on previous levels.

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: Is my right hon. Friend aware that it has been estimated that in 1962 it took a manual worker on the national average wage 49·1 minutes to earn enough to buy 1 lb of best sirloin steak and at the end of 1972 it took him 46·5 minutes?

Mr. Godber: I am grateful for those facts. Both my hon. Friend and the House will be glad to know that since those figures were produced the price of beef has dropped.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what percentage rise he expects in the retail price of bacon, pork and sugar in June 1973, as compared with the present price, following the agreements reached in Brussels on 23rd January.

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by how much the price of bread and sugar is expected to increase in the next three months.

Mr. Godber: The removal of the subsidy on sugar, which has already been announced, will allow our price to rise but it should still be somewhat below the world level; the total effect will be to raise the retail price by about 1½p for a 2 1b. bag of granulated sugar by 1st July. The price of British bacon will rise nearer to that of Danish bacon as a result of the removal of the bacon stabiliser.
Bread is not affected by the decisions arrived at in Brussels, but bakers are, of course, confronted with a sharp rise in world cereal prices as well as other cost increases.

Mr. Jenkins: Is this not intolerable in a period of wage and price freeze? Will

the right hon. Gentleman answer the question about bacon? Is he aware that these rises are of such a character that they are in danger of changing the pattern of consumption in this country and forcing lower income groups to the level and type of food consumption which exists in Italy where they seldom eat meat? Is this what Government policy is leading to?

Mr. Godber: No. The rise in home bacon prices will be substantially less than the rise in imported bacon prices. As with other commodities in short supply, we are subject to the demands of other countries. Danish bacon has risen sharply but British bacon will not rise to the same level. It will obviously rise, with the stabiliser removed.

Mr. Tom King: Is not the rate of exchange absolutely crucial to the question of keeping the cost of food down? Would my right hon. Friend not agree that the greatest contribution that could be made by those concerned to restrict the rise in food prices would be to maintain confidence abroad, to maintain industrial production, and avoid strikes, so that confidence in the pound can be retained at the highest possible level?

Mr. Godber: There is a close relationship between all these things. There has been a shortage in supply because of crop failures. Changes in the relative value of money have undoubtedly had a tremendous effect, which we have felt in recent years.

Mr. Shore: The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that he has deliberately on this occasion put up the prices of sugar and bacon by withdrawing subsidies. Has he chosen to do that or has he done so as a result of the CAP and our membership?

Mr. Godber: If we had fallen in strictly with the rules we should have removed them on 1st February. In fact, we have made arrangements to phase the change. That was felt to be the best thing to do in the interests of the consumer.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will set up a committee of three housewives to investigate the


reasons for the increase in fish prices since 1st January 1973.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mrs. Peggy Fenner): No, Sir.

Mr. Mitchell: Does that answer mean that the hon. Lady does not need to take expert advice on this question? If that is so, will she tell the House the consideration the recent lower prices?

Mrs. Fenner: To set up such a committee would serve no useful purpose. Fish prices change essentially in response to fluctuations in supply, and supplies have on average been running at about 4 per cent. below the catches of a year ago because of reduced catching on our main fishing grounds.

Mr. Kinsey: If my hon. Friend should at any time consider setting up an investigation for the housewife, will she choose housewives who are the wives of North Sea fishermen and see what they have to say? Further, will she tell me why a 3½ per cent. increase was allowed in frozen in-store fish? Was that at the highest point of the crisis, or did it take into consideration the recent lower prices.

Mrs. Fenner: Having said that I did not feel a useful purpose would be served by setting up a group of three housewives I can hardly promise that they will be North Sea fishermen's wives. I am sure that if they were they would know that their husbands' catches have been affected by bad weather, to which inshore fishing is particularly vulnerable at this time of the year.

Mr. Molloy: Is the hon. Lady aware that housewives do not believe that she is any longer on speaking terms with the right hon. Gentleman? Whilst she is engaged in allowing prices to rise——

Mr. Speaker: Order. What has this to do with the committee of three housewives?

Mr. Molloy: The Prime Minister appointed the hon. Lady to look after the interests of the housewife, a position in which she has lamentably failed. Is she having any difficulty with her right hon. Friend? If she is she ought to say so.

Mr. Speaker: That does not arise out of the Question.

Mr. Jay: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what has been the percentage rise in the retail price of mutton, lamb, bacon and beef since June 1970.

Mr. Godber: As the answer contains a number of figures I will, with permission, circulate the information in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Jay: As the Government's White Paper of July 1971 told us that food prices would rise 2½ per cent. a year if we joined the EEC, and as all these prices are up by 30 per cent., 50 per cent. and 70 per cent. already, is it not clear that the White Paper was just a pack of lies?

Mr. Godber: No, I do not think that it was. Incidentally, the figures quoted in the White Paper were rather similar to those quoted by the previous Government in their White Paper on food price rises. The right hon. Gentleman will be able to see from the table that there have been great increases in meat prices. I have never sought to pretend that that was not so. They have not been in any way related to joining the Community.
The price of beef here and in the Cornmunity—a price which is far above the guide price of the Community—is due not to the common agricultural policy but to the shortage of world supplies.

Mr. Buchan: Having regard to the alarming figures that we shall see in his Written Answer, and reverting to the earlier Question, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that now that we have discovered his and the Prime Minister's method of changing and fiddling the figures, even under his own method the figures show that we are now eating less beef, lamb and mutton in 1972 than we were at the end of rationing in 1954?

Mr. Godber: The answer is "No." I very much resent the charge about fiddling figures. There is no question of fiddling. These are official figures which the Labour Government used. We are merely taking the same figures and using them again. They are the only figures which show the total consumption.

Mr. Buchan: They show a drop.

Mr. Godber: The hon. Gentleman is wrong again. The figures do not show a


drop. They show a rise in the total consumption of beef, in the way that I have indicated and as he will see.

Mr. Buchan: indicated dissent.

Mr. Godber: It is no use hon. Gentleman's shaking his head. These are the facts, and they are based on the official figures.

Mr. Cant: Will the right hon. Gentleman explain how the food retail index figure will be affected by the most recent recommendation of the Commission that farmers should be paid £3·40 per 100 litres for not producing milk?

Mr. Godber: There has been no decision about not producing milk, and it would be too soon to start talking about the effects. The price of meat is certainly not affected by anything regarding Community regulations. It is due to world shortage and nothing else.

Following is the information:
The following table shows the percentage increases in average retail prices of lamb, bacon and beef, as collected for the purposes of the Department of Employment's General Index of Retail Prices, between 16th June 1970 and 15th December 1972, the latest date for which information is available. Comparable information is not available for mutton.

Lamb: home-killed


Loin (with bone)
…
32·1


Breast*
…
28·6


Best end of neck
…
29·6


Shoulder (with bone)
…
23·0


Leg (with bone)
…
27·2


Lamb: imported


Loin (with bone)
…
50·8


Breast*
…
57·1


Best end of neck
…
50·0


Shoulder (with bone)
…
46·5


Leg (with bone)
…
42·7


Bacon


Collar*
…
26·2


Gammon*
…
26·9


Middle cut, smoked*
…
26·5


Back, smoked
…
33·5


Back, unsmoked
…
32·8


Streaky, smoked
…
30·0


Beef: home-killed


Chuck
…
49·1


Sirloin (without bone)
…
496


Silverside (without bone)*
…
43·6


Back ribs (with bone)*
…
52·7


Fore ribs (with bone)
…
50·7


Brisket (with bone)
…
66·5


Rump steak*
…
44·6

Beef: imported chilled


Chuck
…
56·1


Silverside (without bone)*
…
42·6


Rump steak*
…
30·5


* or Scottish equivalent

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what advice he now has for housewives who find most meat proteins beyond their purse.

Mr. Godber: I do not accept the assumption in the hon. Lady's Question, and I would advise housewives to continue to do what they always have done, namely, exercise their own judgment on the relative value of the different meats available.

Mrs. Short: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean shopping around? Is he aware that the women of this country are fed up with his forays to Brussels and, when he returns, the stories that are put out on radio and television of his all-night sessions, battling about prices, when the result is that prices go up all the time? Prices of beef, pork, lamb, fish, eggs and cheese have all risen. What does he suggest housewives should buy to feed their families?

Mr. Godber: I remind the hon. Lady that, as I have already explained to the House, these rises—[Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Lady does not want to listen to a reply.

Mrs. Short: Come on. Tell them.

Mr. Godber: These rises are due to world conditions.

Mrs. Short: Tell them.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady——

Mrs. Short: Disgraceful.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady must contain herself——

Mrs. Short: They ought to resign.

Mr. Speaker: —or leave the Chamber.

Mrs. Short: Incompetent lot.

Mr. Godber: I hope that the hon. Lady will do me the courtesy of listening to the answer. She has made many charges. As I said, these rises are due to world conditions, as she knows. The


fact of Britain's joining the Community has not had an impact of any kind.
The hon. Lady asked what housewives will buy. I remind her that the official figures show that consumption, particularly by old people, has risen—[Interruption.] Clearly the hon. Lady does not wish to hear, but these are the true facts.

Common Agricultural Policy

Mr. Marten: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what changes in the common agricultural policy he will be proposing to the Council of Ministers of the EEC.

Mr. Godber: We accepted the CAP in our application for membership of the Community and we adopted it on 1st February subject to the transitional arrangements provided in the Treaty of Accession. We intend to play our full part in the future development of the CAP to meet the needs and circumstances of the enlarged Community.

Mr. Marten: Does my right hon. Friend recall that during the Common Market debates we were led to believe, rightly or wrongly, that once we were in the Community we would do our best to change a totally absurd policy—and everybody would agree with that? Will he consult the Leader of the House so that we can have a debate on the follies of the common agricultural policy and so that Parliament can instruct the Minister on what to say when he goes to Brussels to reform the CAP?

Mr. Godber: I will inform my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of my hon. Friend's desire for a debate, but I have made clear in public speeches outside the House our desire to see the CAP develop in a way which would be better, we believe, from the point of view of consumers and producers alike. We believe we can help to provide a system whereby the CAP in some degree changes its basis, but we accepted the CAP, we acknowledged that we were joining a club, and we have to abide by its rules. We do not wish to change the rules, but we want to see the Community develop in a way which will help all sections.

Mr. Hooson: In the light of the Minister's reply, does he not believe it important that this country should advocate a

system of subsidies within the Common Market to benefit the consumers and to protect farmers within the CAP generally?

Mr. Godber: I do not know about a system of subsidies but a system of production grants, such as we have had in this country in the past, might be adopted by the Common Market countries. There are proposals for consideration in Brussels next week which could lead in this direction. I think that people in the Community are already thinking on these lines. I have indicated in other speeches the way in which the Government believe they should move forward.

Mr. John Hall: Is it possible to operate the CAP effectively while this country operates a floating currency rate?

Mr. Godber: We agreed, at the January meeting of the Council of Agriculture Ministers, the basis for the floating of the pound. The changed circumstances, with the change in the dollar, may call for some revision, but we allowed for changes by introducing what is called a monetary compensatory amount to impose on top of the existing system. I agree that so long as any currencies float it makes it more complicated to work out relationships.

Mr. Shore: Clearly we wish to change the rules of the CAP. Not only is it in our own vital national interest to change those rules; it is also a matter of the utmost importance for the whole international community. Will not the Minister reconsider the matter and urge his colleagues—if he cannot do so himself—to put this item on the agenda of the Council of Ministers and make sure that it forms part of the international discussions on trade which are to take place on a world-wide basis later this year?

Mr. Godber: I do not think it is a matter of changing the rules. It involves a change of direction, and I have indicated the sort of way we think things should develop. In regard to the wider issues, involving international discussions, these are very much in our minds and in the minds of our Common Market colleagues in seeking to obtain satisfactory results from the international discussions with third countries during the course of this year.

Foodstuffs (Date Marking)

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans he now has to implement the Report of the Food Standards Committee on the date stamping of foodstuffs, in the light of the comments he has received from interested parties and consumer organisations; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Lamborn: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he is now in a position to make a statement on the Report of the Food Standards Committee on the date stamping of foodstuffs.

Mr. Edward Taylor: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he intends to implement the Report of the Food Standards Committee on the date stamping of foodstuffs.

Mrs. Fenner: The Government accept the recommendations of the Food Standards Committee that there should be regulations on open date marking to come into effect in 1975 but that in the meantime date marking should be developed as fully as possible. The coming year will see the start of, or experiments in, "sell by" date marking of almost all products whose freshness is of most concern to the housewife.

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: Is my hon. Friend aware that the whole House will welcome that statement? It is particularly satisfactory to those of us who have pressed this matter in the House that it is a Conservative Government who have announced their intention to make these excellent regulations. Will she say whether the regulations are likely to include the recommendations of the Food Standards Committee with regard to temperature control of perishable food during transport, storage and display?

Mrs. Fenner: We recognise that not only date stamping will help consumers to keep prepared food in the best condition. There are other items, such as better labelling and the encouragement of a monitoring process in all related activities, including the point raised by my hon. Friend. I have set up a small steering group under the chairmanship of Mrs. Patricia McLaughlin, founder of

the Housewives Trust. She will be assisted by leading figures from food distribution, processing, consumer organisations and enforcement authorities to examine the whole subject.

Mr. Kaufman: Does the Minister not agree that instead of the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mrs. Sally Oppenheim) seeking to make party capital out of this issue, the congratulations for this advance towards date stamping should go to the Sunday Times, which conducted a brilliant campaign upon it and which was responsible for highlighting this issue, demonstrating, as it did in the case of the thalidomide children, what a valuable institution a campaigning newspaper is?

Mrs. Fenner: I should like also to thank the Food Standards Committee, because it has done a very good job in its task of encouraging the development of open date marking.

Mr. Kinsey: Will my hon. Friend keep a sane head on her shoulders on this matter? There is a need for date stamping in certain directions, but will she bear in mind that some long-life foods would be handicapped by date stamping?

Mrs. Fenner: We recognised—and the Food Standards Committee made this clear—that there would be complex areas which would produce difficulties for some foods. It is because of the complex nature of the subject that the committee recommended that the regulations should not come into force until 1975. In the early period we are concentrating on short-life foods, because we feel that these are of most concern to the housewives. There are certainly difficulties in the marking of long-life foods. The steering group will have all these factors in mind.

Mr. David Clark: Hon. Members on this side of the House very much welcome this step, but may I ask the Minister whether the other half of the problem—unit pricing—is also to be dealt with by the Government? Is she aware that we feel that this matter is of such importance that it should have been dealt with by way of a statement, so that we could have had a full discussion on it?

Mrs. Fenner: If the hon. Gentleman will table a Question dealing with unit pricing I will be happy to deal with it.


It is entirely outside the scope of the present Question. On 1st February, in answer to a Question, I announced that I would be ready, in the light of the observations received, to make some statement within a fortnight. In the interim period three Questions were set down on the Order Paper and it seemed proper to answer those.

Feedingstuffs (Price)

Mr. Charles Morrison: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by how much animal feedingstuffs raw materials have increased in price between June 1972 and the latest date.

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Anthony Stodart): Between June 1972 and the end of January last cereal prices rose by about 40 per cent., while prices of animal and vegetable proteins more than doubled.

Mr. Morrison: Does that not demonstrate yet again one of the problems attached to stabilising food prices? Can my hon. Friend say what effect this situation is having upon farmers' profit margins?

Mr. Stodart: It is a fact that various foodstuffs, none of them grown in this country, have risen by immense figures. Cotton cake has risen from £46 to £105 and groundnut cake from £55 to £131. This will undoubtedly have a considerable effect on farmers' profits. That matter is taken into account in the annual Price Review.

Mr. McBride: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that these prices are rising scandalously and that poor harvests in other countries cannot be blamed entirely? Does he accept that the small to medium-sized poultry farmer, and even the pigeon fancier, is being hit hard in obtaining supplies of food for his birds? In these days of instant Government can the Minister say why it should take the Parliamentary Secretary five weeks to answer two letters of protest over food prices which I have sent to her?

Mr. William Price: Nine weeks.

Mr. Stodart: The last question has nothing whatever to do with the Question on the Order Paper. The poor world

crops of groundnut and soya have everything to do with the rise in prices.

Agricultural Workers (Safety)

Mr. Farr: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he is taking to improve safety for those who are engaged in agriculture or on the land.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: Our contacts with manufacturers, our advisory activities and our enforcement of the regulations have all underlined the importance we attach to preventing accidents. This, together with first-class co-operation by all concerned, has certainly helped to reduce non-fatal accidents, while fatal accidents last year were the lowest on record.

Mr. Farr: Is my hon. Friend aware that the fatal accident rate for work on the land has actually doubled in the last 10 years? In view of this disturbing revelation, will he undertake to hold an inquiry?

Mr. Stodart: With respect to my hon. Friend, I cannot accept what he has said. The fatal accident figure for England and Wales in 1963 was 118 and in 1972 107.

Mr. Concannon: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that some of us who were concerned with the Committee stage of the then Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill last year were absolutely horrified to learn of the accident rate in farming? Is he further aware that some of us believe that what the industry needs is the discipline that comes from a closed shop trade union organisation? Does he realise that while some of the regulations he has mentioned, such as those dealing with tractor cabs, are magnificent, the decision—and some of my colleagues and I must take some of the blame for this—to make these regulations wait for seven years is virtually condemning to death many people in the farming industry?

Mr. Stodart: The greatest number of fatal accidents is still due to overturning tractors. It is highly satisfactory that the regulations are at last beginning to bite. The time factor was something which both Governments examined. This was the conclusion they both felt themselves bound to reach.

Meat

Mr. David Stoddart: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the consumption in ounces per head per week in the United Kingdom of carcase meat and beef, respectively, in the second quarter of 1954 and the third quarter of 1972.

Mr. Body: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the consumption of carcase meat in the United Kingdom in the second quarter of 1954 and the third quarter of 1972 in ounces per head per week.

Dr. Gilbert: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the consumption of beef in ounces per head in the United Kingdom in the second quarter of 1954 and the third quarter of 1972.

Mr. Godber: As the answer contains a series of figures, I will, with permission, circulate the information in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Stoddart: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the latest food survey figures show a very disturbing trend? Is he aware that in the second quarter of 1954—the last quarter of food rationing—the consumption of carcase meat per head was 17·33 ounces per week and that in the third quarter of 1972 it was only 13.8 ounces per week? Bearing in mind his previous answer, does he agree that it seems that we are now having rationing not physically but by price?

Mr. Godber: I could perhaps help the House if I gave the total figures, which will appear in the OFFICIAL REPORT, which are that carcase meat as a whole—this does not include poultry meat—for the second quarter of 1954 was 23.88 ounces and for the third quarter of 1972 was 27·28 ounces, showing an increase of 14 per cent. If poultry was added one would have an increase of 27 per cent. in total meat consumption over that period.

Mr. Body: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if the British housewife could buy beef at an average price of 39p per lb more of it would be eaten? That is precisely the average price of beef available to the Japanese housewife, who is now obtaining beef from Australia as a

result of Australia diverting its supplies from this country.

Mr. Godber: I was not aware of the price in Japan. No doubt there are many factors which lead to the formation of prices in different countries. What I have made clear is that this country is a substantial net importer, and imports large quantities from other countries. The facts which I have given indicate the precise consumption figures.

Mr. Stoddart: Is it in order for the Minister not to give figures in answer to my Question and then subsequently to give them in answer to a supplementary question—particularly when they are rigged figures? Is that in order?

Mr. Speaker: Certainly it is. No question of order arises. The Chair has no control over the contents of an answer, subject to certain reservations.

Mr. Buchan: Surely the right hon. Gentleman is moving into very dodgy territory. I recognise his problem. The Prime Minister, having made a foolish statement, now wants his other Departments to bear him out. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the food survey figures in answer to Question No. 1. Why on Question No. 1? Why does he now change his methodology and use a new type of figuring? Is this change of figuring to protect the absurdities of his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and get him out of a mess?

Mr. Godber: I do not think that I referred to the food survey figures in Question No. 1. So far as I recall there certainly was no reference to that in what I read out. What I gave was the figure as I have it. I have given the figure in regard to the figures taken from the Ministry's tables on food supplies moving into consumption in the United Kingdom. [Interruption.] These are official figures. I assume that hon. Members are not challenging their authenticity. They are trying to draw figures from the food survey which do not give total consumption. The figures for the food survey do not take any account of food consumed in schools, hotels, works canteens and restaurants. Food is consumed in large quantities in such places, and there has been a substantial increase in eating in these different sectors. That is the change.

Following is the information:

The table shows total consumption in the United Kingdom, in ounces per head per week, of carcase meat and beef, respectively, in the second quarter of 1954 and the third quarter of 1972.

2nd Quarter
3rd Quarter




1954
1972


Beef and Veal
…
11·53
12·76


Mutton and Lamb
…
7·31
6·30


Pork
…
5·04
8·22


Totals
…
23·88
27·28

The above figures are derived from the Ministry's tables of "Food Supplies Moving into Consumption in the United Kingdom", prepared annually. These include meat subsequently processed and meat consumed in institutions and catering establishments.

Potato Blight

Dr. Stuttaford: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he is taking to prevent the distribution and sale of potatoes affected by potato blight.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: Blighted potatoes would not meet the quality standards laid down by the Potato Marketing Board, and so could not be offered for sale by farmers or merchants. This year's crop is, in fact, almost entirely free from blight.

Dr. Stuttaford: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is suspicion that there may be a link between the consumption of blighted potatoes and incidence of spina bifida? Will he reassure us today that we will not be able to obtain blighted potatoes in shops?

Mr. Stodart: I am aware of the suggestion that there is a link with the disease mentioned. I am also aware that an article in the Lancet on 3rd February by Edinburgh University geneticists said quite emphatically that there was no link with blighted potatoes. Certainly it is most unlikely that they will be obtainable this year in the shops—first because the crop is almost entirely free from blight and secondly because the standards of the Potato Marketing Board have been substantially raised this season.

North Sea Pollution

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will now introduce legislation for penalties for those found guilty of polluting the North Sea.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: As my right hon. Friend and I have said in answer to previous Questions by the hon. Member, the legislation will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time permits.

Mr. Dalyell: As this is the first anniversary of seven Questions put at consecutive intervals, and on each occasion "as soon as parliamentary time permits" has been the answer, when will parliamentary time permit?

Mr. Stodart: I should have thought that would depend upon how swiftly parliamentary business proceeds.

Mr. Laurance Reed: Is my hon. Friend aware that this is not only the first anniversary of one of seven Questions; it is the first anniversary of the Oslo Convention to prevent dumping of wastes at sea? Does my hon. Friend accept the advice of the Royal Commission on the Environment that the implementation of the convention should be brought into effect without delay and as a matter of priority?

Mr. Stodart: Yes. Both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) know precisely what are my hopes about this. They are well aware that the arrangements for the business of this House are not for me. I will, of course, again draw my right hon. Friend's attention to what has been said.

Forestry (White Paper)

Mr. David Clark: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he now intends to publish his White Paper on Forestry.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: Consultations are still in progress, and it is too early to say when there will be an announcement or the form which it will take.

Mr. Clark: Will the Minister try to speed up this series of consultations, because the lack of clarity about the future


is causing a great deal of concern in upland areas?

Mr. Stodart: First, I take this opportunity of congratulating the hon. Gentleman on his appointment to the Opposition Front Bench.
I am very anxious to come to a decision on this matter, as are my right hon. Friends. However, although the consultations are taking some time, forestry is an extremely long-term business and it is important that we should get things right.

Mr. Marten: Does my hon. Friend agree that trees should be planted in really worthwhile soil and not just anywhere, as some people want to do, merely to raise the labour force in an area? That is an absolute waste.

Mr. Stodart: I could not agree more. I am a strong advocate of good land use—the right land being used for trees, the right land being used for farming, and benefit to each.

Mr. Lawson: Before making up his mind on the future of forestry, will the Minister study what the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs has said on this very subject?

Mr. Stodart: The hon. Gentleman will wish to know that I made a point of getting a copy on the evening that the report was published.

RATING REVALUATION

Mr. Carter: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his recent meeting with the leaders of the large metropolitan authorities.

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the official talks he has held with representatives of municipalities regarding the effects of rating revaluation.

Mr. Kaufman: asked the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement, following his meeting on rates with representatives of Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Bristol city councils.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): I met leaders of six major cities on Friday 9th February, and representa-

tives of the local authority associations on Tuesday 13th February. We discussed the problems confronting some local authorities in fixing their rates for next year and I undertook to give careful and urgent consideration to the points they put to me.

Mr. Carter: I thank the Prime Minister for that reply. Does he agree that whenever the present revaluation took place cities like Birmingham would have suffered and been put at a disadvantage with respect to other authorities? Does he think that, as a matter of urgency, cities like Birmingham should get immediate help with the problems with which they are faced and be given parity with other authorities regarding Government help?

The Prime Minister: The representatives of the local authorities who came to see me each left a memorandum setting out the statistics that they had compiled to illustrate the point mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. I have today received a further memorandum from the leader of the Birmingham City Council—Councillor Yapp—giving supplementary figures for which we asked. All these are now being studied. A theme running through all the remarks of the representatives of the local authorities was that although revaluation, taking the country as a whole, leads to no greater expenditure, there are differences between areas and, within areas, between domestic and commercial properties, and, in domestic houses, between individuals. This aspect is being further examined.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: Will my right hon. Friend tell us whether any representatives of the Labour-controlled borough of Waltham Forest were at these meetings? If so, was he able to state his amazement that they are able to spend £15,000 on aerials for colour television sets in council houses but cannot find £6,000 for a playing field to be made from a piece of waste land for 400 children in my constituency?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend has made the point that he wanted to make. We did not discuss individual items of this kind. The local authorities, of their own will, illustrated expenditure which was the result of Government policies and expenditure which was of their own choosing.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is the Prime Minister aware that there is genuine appreciation that he saw the representatives of local authorities and heard their cases? Is he further aware that many other authorities not directly represented—for instance, the borough of Walsall—are severely affected and are expecting a 30 per cent. increase in rates as a result of revaluation, and that these charges will bear very much on the lowly-paid in the community? Will he consider imposing a freeze on rate increases for at least 12 months?

The Prime Minister: At the second meeting all the local authority associations were represented. These covered the whole country and each type of local authority, so the right hon. Gentleman may be assured that his authority was represented. A number of proposals were put forward. The local authorities have not put forward the idea of a freeze in the way suggested by the right hon. Gentleman, but various other proposals which were put forward are being examined.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: Apart from asking for extra grants to meet the special problems affecting the Midlands area, did my right hon. Friend form the view that local authorities themselves were going to try to bring in economies which were within their power, in order that they could make a real contribution to the inflationary problem that the country is facing?

The Prime Minister: Some of the figures provided by the local authorities, and particularly by the cities, showed the extent to which some of them had deliberately cut down on their expenditure in order to avoid an increase in rates. I say that in all fairness to them. There were others who so far have not been prepared to do that. We are obviously presented with a mixed picture.

Mr. Kaufman: Will the Prime Minister be mindful that by their very nature local authority services are labour-intensive? That being so, is he aware that unless the Government come forward urgently with sizeable rate aid the choice in many areas will be between massive rate increases and cutting essential services? It will lead to further unemployment in areas such as Manchester, where unemployment is already a great problem.

The Prime Minister: The Government are providing the greatest measure of support grant ever this year, as well, of course, as the increased element for the domestic ratepayer. It has also been our purpose to deal with the various problems of the local authorities, particularly those emanating from inflation and from the programmes which the Government have inaugurated.
But the hon. Member's point becomes particularly relevant in those communities, either cities or boroughs, where there is a decreasing population but where the authorities find themselves committed to almost the same expenditure on the services which they provide. That is one of the matters that we are examining.

PRESIDENT NIXON (TALKS)

Mr James Lamond: asked the Prime Minister if, during his recent visit to the United States, he invited President Nixon to visit Great Britain.

Mr. Wyn Roberts: asked the Prime Minister if, at his official meetings with President Nixon, he discussed the operation of phase 2 of the American control of prices and incomes and its relevance to the similar phase in this country.

Dr. Vaughan: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a further statement on his recent discussions with the President of the United States of America.

Mr. Redmond: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his discussions with President Nixon.

Mr. Meacher: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his talks with President Nixon.

Mr. Norman Lamont: asked the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement on his talks with President Nixon.

Mr. Adley: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement following his visit to meet President Nixon.

The Prime Minister: As regards an invitation to President Nixon to visit this


country, the President knows that he is always welcome here, but he announced before our talks began that he did not plan to visit Europe in the first half of 1973.
On the operation of the United States Government's policies on pay and prices, we were of course already aware of the way in which the United States system operated, but while in Washington I received first-hand accounts both from the President and from Secretary Shultz. On other aspects of my discussions I have nothing to add to what I told the House in answer to Questions on 6th and 13th February.—[Vol. 850, c. 220–3, and c. 1138–9.]

Mr. Lamond: Since the Prime Minister spoke with such admiration of President Nixon's handling of the trade unions in the United States, would it not have been of value to have further discussions with him immediately about what the right hon. Gentleman should do in the present circumstances, instead of truculently complaining that he cannot get British trade union leaders to sell their members down the river—[Interruption.]—through the gas strike?

The Prime Minister: When asked about this matter I told the House that the America trade union movement was co-operating fully with the President, even though it had very deep political differences with him. I was perfectly entitled, yesterday, to ask the TUC for its co-operation in helping the nation to beat the problem of inflation.

Mr. Roberts: Does the fact that my right hon. Friend now regards international monetary reform as a top priority mean that he attaches less or no importance to European economic and monetary reform?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir, not at all. I said yesterday in a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce that it was essential for the Community urgently to formulate its own position so that we could help to put drive into the general movement to get international monetary reform. I think the events of the last 10 days have indicated more clearly than ever how essential it is to achieve monetary reform, because every individual country, even those as powerful

as the United States or Germany, is at the mercy of vast movements of liquid money right across the world at any time, without any relationship to the economic position of those countries.

Mr. Edelman: Will the Prime Minister say whether he discussed with the President the possibility of a tripartite collaboration between the United States, Britain and France in connection with the development of Concorde?

The Prime Minister: We did not discuss that in any detail. It is obviously a matter for the companies concerned. It has sometimes been mentioned, but not, I think, seriously studied—and not so much about the present Concorde as about any future "stretched" version of the aircraft.

Dr. Vaughan: Following the Prime Minister's speech yesterday to the American Chamber of Commerce and his answer just now, will he say a little more about what progress he thinks could be made within the Community towards achieving greater flexibility of monetary rates?

The Prime Minister: There were discussions between the Finance Ministers of the Community yesterday on the events of the last 10 days, the lessons to be learned from them, and how the Community can develop its own policy. In the course of an answer like this I would not expect to go into detail about possible arrangements. It is essential, however, that the Community should formulate its position for the Committee of Twenty, so that we can make more rapid progress.

Mr. Meacher: Did the Prime Minister discuss the possibility of dollar and sterling devaluation, and did he recall his statement of November 1967 that devaluation was a confession of failure and of defeat? When will the Prime Minister have the decency to admit that the responsibility for two confessions of failure and two defeats in the last two years rests on him and on him alone?

The Prime Minister: Obviously the question of sterling devaluation was not discussed, because sterling is floating—[Interruption.]—and the dollar was a matter which was obviously discussed between President Nixon, Mr. Shultz and


myself, but those discussions were confidential.

Mr. Redmond: When President Nixon comes to this country will my right hon. Friend send Concorde to bring him over, in order to make it clear that the Government will not lose their nerve over Concorde as the Labour Government lost it over the TSR2?

The Prime Minister: I think that the President realises that already.

Mr. Thorpe: Reverting to the question of the monetary situation, does the Prime Minister agree that one of the reasons why sterling has not been subjected to all the pressures put upon other currencies during the last crisis is that sterling has been floating? If that is the case, will the Prime Minister say why the Chancellor of the Exchequer, apparently echoing the Prime Minister's view, is so determined to re-fix sterling and make it more vulnerable?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman must recognise that there are many aspects to the he problem, and that different solutions are possible. If we are to make progress towards an integrated economic community, which is what the right hon. Gentleman wants, it is desirable that we should have an integrated currency system in which the parities are fixed but which can also be changed when required.
The question of what the relationship of that system would be with the dollar or with other currencies is also a matter for discussion and resolution in an international context, and that is why it is so important that we should get on with international monetary reforms.

Mr. Adley: Did my right hon. Friend have a chance to discuss with the President the changed and changing relationship between the United States, Europe and China? Did my right hon. Friend express to the President the view which is held by many people in this country that China represents a great and expanding potential market for European exports, particularly aero-space exports?

The Prime Minister: Yes, we discussed that matter and we fully recognised the potentialities to which my hon. Friend has drawn attention, as does President Nixon.

We have diplomatic and trade relations and it is open to us to exploit the situation as far as we can. It must be recognised, however, that because of the system of financing her trade upon which the Government in Peking at the moment insists it is not likely that the growth of trade will be as fast as some of our trade with countries where we can help with export credit guarantees, and so on.

Mr. Michael Foot: Now that the Prime Minister has been converted to the policy of full-hearted floating, will he give an undertaking that he will not return to the undertakings he gave at the summit, or on the question of fixed parities?

The Prime Minister: I fully adhere to the undertaking I gave that the best system for an integrated community is one of fixed and adjustable parities. I fully adhere to that, and I believe that we must solve the problems which arise from it. [Interruption.] If we are to have an integrated Community we must have fixed parities, and should the strain become too great we must be able to move that parity and achieve the result we want. That, I believe, is a desirable system for the Community.

IMMIGRANTS (EEC COUNTRIES)

Mr. Duffy: asked the Prime Minister if he is satisfied with the coordination between the Department of the Environment, Department of Employment, and Department of Social Services and Home Department about the rules governing the housing, wages, social and political rights of immigrant workers in the Common Market countries.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Duffy: Has the Prime Minister seen the statement made last month by Bishop Cleary, Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham, saying that immigrants in the Common Market countries are poorly housed, badly paid, have no political and social rights, and are treated as short-term fodder for the economies of those countries? Will the right hon. Gentleman take urgent steps to see that this is not the lot of British workers who may move into the other member countries? Will the Prime Minister invite those countries to get together in order to see


that such workers are treated in a less haphazard and makeshift manner?

The Prime Minister: I have not seen the statement to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I understand that these matters have been discussed under the auspices of the Council of Europe and that our representatives have played a full part in the discussions.

GAS INDUSTRY (DISPUTE)

Mr. Benn: Mr. Benn (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement on the effect on industry of the present dispute in the gas industry.

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Walker): My present information is that some 700 of the larger industrial users of gas have had their supply interrupted. This effect is concentrated in the Northern Region and the West Midlands, where 600 industrial users are affected. I do not yet have authoritative figures for the number of men laid off as a result of the gas dispute.

Mr. Benn: I thank the Secretary of State for that reply, though perhaps he can say a little more about the situation with respect to gas. May I ask him these questions? Is it the policy of the Government to give priority to domestic consumers, hospitals and old people's homes where the safety factors indicate that that would be sensible? Are the Government consulting industry on a regular basis about the allocation of supplies, possibly on a rota basis? To set the problems of safety in perspective, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that there have been 110 explosions in the past two years and more than 25 deaths, under normal working conditions, and will the right hon. Gentleman authorise the Gas Corporation to give the figures? Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the BBC and the IBA to intensify the effort that they are putting in to give information to the public about what is likely to happen and how to handle the safety problems which may be involved? Will he publicise the arrangements agreed between the unions, Age Concern and others on behalf of

old people? Finally, will the right hon. Gentleman keep the House informed?

Mr. Walker: Where possible, priority is being given to domestic users and hospitals. However, that is not possible in many cases because of the system. As for arranging quotas, I am afraid that there is little scope for doing this in view of the distribution arrangements for gas. The right hon. Gentleman asked about safety figures. In normal conditions these are regularly published and made available. As for the manner in which safety is being organised, obviously the Government must have real concern. Methods of preserving safety are being made known in regular bulletins put out by the BBC and newspapers. The Government will examine every possible means of increasing the supply of information.

Mr. Awdry: Does my right hon. Friend agree that these militant men are challenging the very authority of Government? Would not it help if just for once the Opposition supported the Government and tried to persuade these men to see reason?

Mr. Walker: With the offer available to the men, and the facilities which the Pay Board offers them, I believe it would be in the interests of the country for these men to return to work.

Mr. Frederick Lee: Does the Secretary of State agree that there are few people who understand the gas industry as well as Sir Henry Jones? Will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider Sir Henry's suggestion about setting up an inquiry into the dispute?

Mr. Walker: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Sir Henry Jones, in his letter to The Times this morning, first urges the men to return immediately and, secondly, suggests a court of inquiry for phase 3. In terms of phase 2 he says that the men should return. As for phase 3, I draw the attention of the House to paragraph 14 of Schedule 1 of the Counter-Inflation Bill which allows the Pay Board to set up an inquiry.

Sir Harmar Nichols: Will my right hon. Friend ignore the phoney alibi implicit in the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) that because 25 people are killed in normal conditions it is only the number over


25 which can be put at the door of this silly strike? The fact that in a normal year, when people are on the alert and all the safety precautions are operating, there are 25 deaths is proof that the country should not be put in such a dangerous position.

Mr. Walker: I agree, and that is why the Government are impressing upon the unions their real concern for the safety of the public.

Mr. John Mendelson: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the country has had for many years a carefully devised system of industrial conciliation? Is not it utterly wrong for the Cabinet and the Prime Minister, even though there is other legislation pending which it is the Government's general policy to introduce, to refuse to use that conciliation machinery in the interests of the nation?

Mr. Walker: The previous Government decided for anti-inflationary purposes to pursue a very strict statutory wage freeze with a further six months' restriction thereafter. This Government have decided that it is essential to take steps to counter inflation. We have announced proposals which apply to all. I believe that the country requires people to comply with it.

Mr. Russell Kerr: Let us have a General Election.

Mr. Evelyn King: In the context of industrial conciliation referred to by the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson), is not one of the difficulties that those who work in a constituency such as mine are mostly agricultural workers who draw a wage which is just about half that of gas workers? Does my right hon. Friend agree that to give any increase to gas workers which was not equally given to lower-paid workers would cause a real and sensible sense of injustice? It cannot be done.

Mr. Walker: If in phase 2 the Government made an exception to any one section of workers because they took militant action, obviously it would be unfair on the rest of the country.

Mr. English: What steps did the right hon. Gentleman's Department take regarding safety immediately after repealing the law making strikes of this character

illegal? Why is the right hon. Gentleman willing to allow the Pay Board to undertake an inquiry when it does not exist? Why does not the right hon. Gentleman call for an inquiry now since only he can do it until the law is passed?

Mr. Walker: For phase 2 we have laid down criteria applying to the whole country and we have set up the Pay Board——

Mr. English: No. It is not yet set up.

Mr. Walker: The present law is a complete freeze until 1st April. As for the future, during phase 2, the Pay Board will be able to examine all the claims for differentials together and collectively.

Mr. Marten: On the subject of explosions, to what extent does this House rely upon gas?

Mr. Walker: I shall need to be given notice of that question.

Mr. Skinner: Is the Secretary of State aware that in the middle of the so-called freeze the Prime Minister decided as a bit of window dressing to set up what might be termed in a general way a court of inquiry into the price of beef? If the right hon. Gentleman can do that as a piece of window dressing, why cannot he do it on an important matter concerning wages?

Mr. Walker: The Government have made it clear that the same rules will apply throughout phase 2 for the whole country. During that period, the Pay Board will be at work to see how phase 3 should work. We shall welcome talks with the TUC on the workings of phase 3.

Mr. Thorpe: Having voted for the Labour Government's attempts to introduce a prices and incomes policy, unlike the right hon. Gentleman, and having supported this Government in their endeavours—albeit while criticising them for wasting two years—may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he agrees that instead of shedding crocodile tears about the effect of the strike, as the right hon. Member for Bristol, South East (Mr. Benn) has done, when we are dealing with an industry whose take-home pay is on average twice the average earnings of constituents of mine in the far West, and when the present policies are attempting to control inflation, he should state


that unless phase 2 is given a chance the chances of curing inflation are nil?

Mr. Walker: I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I must add that it is remarkable that the Opposition should condemn a situation in which compared with October 1969, for example, the gas workers are working on average two hours less each week and earning £10 a week more.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: Does my right hon. Friend have the statistics to calculate the total, cumulative damage to the national interest and our exports, of the gas workers' industrial action? So that the public may understand what is at stake, will he publish them on a running basis daily?

Mr. Walker: The calculation would be impossible to make. What is certainly true is that the country is enjoying fast economic growth. Unemployment is going down and overtime working is going up. That situation can only be sabotaged by irresponsible industrial action.

Mr. Prentice: May I revert to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newton (Mr. Frederick Lee) about the letter in The Times today from Sir Henry Jones. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that he distorted its contents to some extent? What Sir Henry was suggesting was that implementation would have to wait until stage 3 but that there should be an immediate court of inquiry so that the merits of the case could be independently examined. Will the Government realise that such suggestions from a man with Sir Henry's authority and experience give them the chance, if they want a chance, to get the country out of the mess into which they have plunged it? Or are they more concerned with fighting a doctrinaire battle than with the national well-being?

Mr. Walker: Almost every utterance of the right hon. Gentleman has not been designed to try to persuade the men to go back to work and to share in the fight against inflation. As for an independent court of inquiry, it would be completely wrong, when the Government are setting up a Pay Board to examine all claims as to special problems and special need, to take one claim away from that procedure and deal with it separately.

Mr. Harold Wilson: Sir Henry Jones knows the gas workers as well as anyone, and knows that they are and have been for decades the most moderate people in the country in the matter of industrial disputes. If it is his view that to have a statutory court of inquiry now would lead them to go back to work, why did the right hon. Gentleman say that they may have a court of inquiry if the Pay Board, when it is set up, establishes one, thus maintaining the trouble and disruption of production for perhaps several months, when, on Sir Henry Jones's suggestion, the matter could be settled now?

Mr. Walker: Sir Henry Jones first says that it is the duty of the gas workers to go back and to observe phase 2. It would be helpful if we heard a similar remark from the Opposition. In the Government's view, it is much fairer for special circumstances to be dealt with by one Pay Board looking at all such cases.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Harold Wilson: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. James Prior): Yes, Sir.
The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 19TH FEBRUARY—Debate on a Motion to take note of the White Paper on "Education: A Framework for Expansion" (Command No. 5174).
Remaining stages of the Atomic Energy Authority (Weapons Group) Bill [Lords].
TUESDAY 20TH FEBRUARY—Debate on a Motion to Approve the Steel Industry White Paper "Ten Year Development Strategy" (Command No. 5226).
Remaining stages of the Coal Industry Bill and of the Fire Precautions (Loans) Bill.
WEDNESDAY 21ST FEBRUARY—Supply (9th allotted day). There will be a debate on Television Licences for Retired Pensioners, which will arise on an Opposition motion.
Motions relating to the Statements of Immigration Rules.
THURSDAY 22ND FEBRUARY—Debate on the International Monetary Situation, on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Remaining stages of the Land Compensation Bill.
FRIDAY 23RD FEBRUARY—Private Members' Bills.
MONDAY 26TH FEBRUARY—Supply (10th allotted day). Debate on a topic to be announced.

Mr. Wilson: We should like to thank the right hon. Gentleman for rearranging the original plan for next week's business to provide in Government time the debate on the international monetary situation. We all feel it to be absolutely right that the House should debate the subject, having allowed 10 days or so for foreign exchange markets to settle down.
In view of the unsatisfactory state in which the matter has been left, will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement by the Attorney-General, or anyone else who can speak with authority on behalf of the Government in such matters, on the legal aspects of some of the exchanges about the gas dispute at Question Time today and on Tuesday? As the Prime Minister on Tuesday referred in that context to breaches of the law, may we have explained by the Attorney-General what law is being broken in respect of the dispute? It is not a stage 1 anti-freeze dispute, and the stage 2 Bill is not yet law, although, as we undertook it would, it is making reasonably fast progress, despite what the Prime Minister said a few days ago. Therefore, may we have a statement saying whether any law is broken? If it is not, may we have a personal apology from the Prime Minister for what he said to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice) on the question?
In view of all the arguments we have had to listen to for so long about how the Industrial Relations Act would deal with disputes, may we have a statement next week explaining why the Government are not using either the cooling-off period or the strike ballot procedure of that legislation? Or is it that they now know from last year's experience that, as

we told them, those laws, like many of the Prime Minister's utterances, are not only useless but provocative?

Mr. Prior: In fairness to the right hon. Gentleman, I must tell him that I do not believe that either of the two matters he has raised has anything to do with next week's business.

Mr. Wilson: On a point of order. The right hon. Gentleman is treating the House with contempt. It has traditionally been the practice of the House to ask for statements in the following week. The right hon. Gentleman ran away from the question because he did not know the answer. This comes after earlier in the day—a point to which I drew attention last week—there was a grouping of about 11 or 12 Questions to avoid the Prime Minister's being drawn on the question of industrial relations, on which he has the guts to talk to the television cameras but not to the House.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman has raised a point of order. I do not think that it is a matter for me.

Mr. Stratton Mills: Has my right hon. Friend any information—[HON. MEMBERS: "The Leader of the House should answer the question."] Has my right hon. Friend any information to give the House on the date of publication of the White Paper on the future of Northern Ireland? May I particularly ask that the Government should—

Mr. Edward Short: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for the Leader of the Opposition to ask the Leader of the House for a statement and for the Leader of the House to remain in his seat and make no response? Surely the Opposition have some rights?

Mr. Speaker: The Opposition have many rights. It is not a matter of order. I cannot make Ministers answer, and I am not responsible for the content of their answers. However, I am sure that the Leader of the House has noted the right hon. Gentleman's point, and there may be a consequence.

Mr. Harold Wilson: You have ruled that the matter I raised was not a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Leader of the House himself construed order by ruling out my question on the ground that it had nothing to do with business


for next week. Is it not for you to give the rulings, Mr. Speaker? We are tired of the Prime Minister trying to lay down the law, instead of leaving it to Parliament, but for the right hon. Gentleman to do it is intolerable.

Mr. Prior: I must tell the right hon Gentleman that I thought he was making his points for a very good political reason, but that he was not expecting me to reply to them.
I have noted what he said on the subject of the Attorney-General making a statement to the House, but at the moment I see no reason why that statement is called for.

Mr. Stratton Mills: Reverting to my question on the White Paper on Northern Ireland, may I ask that the Government set themselves a deadline and discipline of 30th March unless, of course, some quite exceptional circumstances intervene?

Mr. Prior: I have noted what my hon. Friend said. I will inform my right hon. Friend of his views, but I cannot at present give a date for the White Paper.

Mr. Faulds: Since it is getting on for nearly a year since the Working Party on Public Lending Right reported to the Paymaster-General, when may we expect a statement—and the present Government are chary of making any sort of statement—on this important public issue?

Mr. Prior: I will consult the Paymaster-General and see when a statement can be made.

Dame Irene Ward: May I ask my right hon. Friend—having asked him, I think, three weeks in succession—when we shall have some news about the Booz Allen Report on Shipbuilding? Could he also say what is happening about shipping in view of the fact that we need some more invisible exports in which, of course, the shipping industry plays a very large and gallant part? I wish to know how we are progressing, because shipbuilding and shipping are very important to our industrial economy. I want a good and satisfactory answer.

Mr. Prior: My hon. Friend the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping has, I think, answered a Question recently about the Booz Allen Report.

Dame Irene Ward: Not satisfactorily.

Mr. Prior: May I say to my hon. Friend that one of the most satisfactory things to have happened about shipbuilding for a long while is the tremendous order that Swan Hunter has gained.

Mr. Russell Kerr: Can the Leader of the House tell us when we shall have an opportunity to discuss the Report of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries on the Independent Broadcasting Authority? Meanwhile, until we get that opportunity, will he instruct his right hon. Friend responsible for Posts and Telecommunications to stop carving up national assets in the interests of his political friends?

Mr. Prior: I reject very strongly the last part of the hon. Gentleman's question. The reply by the Government to the Report of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries on the IBA will, I hope, be available very shortly.

Mr. Booth: Will the Leader of the House inform us when we are to have an opportunity to debate a Restriction on Remuneration Order which is preventing the Co-operative Society from paying increases to its lower-paid workers under agreements which were made well in advance of the present Government's freeze policy? Will he acknowledge that this order was laid before Parliament only three days before it came into operation, that a great number of hon. Members very much resent the way in which this has been done and that there has been no opportunity for the House to express a view upon it?

Mr. Prior: I will consult through the usual channels to see whether time can be made for a discussion of this order. I am afraid that at present I can say no more than that.

Sir Robin Turton: Would the Lord President of the Council make clear whether his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture will be making a statement on Wednesday on the price review? Is the date settled, or will it have to be kept secret until later?

Mr. Prior: My right hon. Friend will in due course be making a statement. It is probable that it will be within three


weeks or so. We shall make a statement on our determinations for 1973–74. A statement can be made later about the determinations which come later for the Community.

Mr. John Silkin: Does the Leader of the House recall that a week ago he gave me an undertaking that he would give the answer to the question whether the White Paper on Private Practice in the National Health Service would come before the Second Reading of the National Health Service Reorganisation Bill? A week has gone by and he has not been in touch with me. Is he now prepared to give the House an assurance?

Mr. Prior: I am sorry that I have not been in touch with the right hon. Gentleman. I still await a final view from the Secretary of State on this matter.
The Second Reading of the National Health Service Reorganisation Bill cannot take place for some weeks owing to other important business. I should think that in all probability the reply to the Select Committee will be available before then, but I would wish to check that again before giving a definite answer.

Mr. Robert Cooke: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that there are at least some hon. Members in this House who do not share the view of the hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Russell Kerr) about producing the Report on the IBA? Many people feel that the report did not reflect truly the evidence and that, as there is this argument about the matter, perhaps we might well have a debate in the House to sort things out.

Mr. Russell Kerr: The hon. Gentleman should talk to his own colleagues.

Mr. Prior: I cannot promise the House any time in the near future for a debate on this matter.

Sir G. de Freitas: When will the Leader of the House provide time for debating some of the important Command Paper reports of last year—I refer to Erroll, Franks, Robens, Younger and so on—or are the Government insisting that we should be merely a legislature reacting to the Government's views on these reports? We want to debate them now.

Mr. Prior: This coming week we are debating two White Papers.

Sir G. de Freitas: I am talking about Erroll, Franks, Robens and Younger.

Mr. Prior: The right hon. Gentleman will know that Erroll has not been published very long.
On the subject of Franks, the Government have said that they are considering the report and will produce their views on it when these are available.
I do not think we are making bad progress as a House at present in debating a great many of these measures, but of course there are always other matters with which to fill the time.

Mr. Kilfedder: Before the White Paper on the proposals for Northern Ireland is published, would my right hon. Friend provide time for a debate so that the House can discuss how those proposals might best be fully, properly and reasonably considered by the Ulster people?
Secondly, could my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the menace which exists in this country presented by the IRA and the front organisations which collect money allegedly for charitable and social purposes, but which money is expended for the purchase of arms and ammunition for use in Northern Ireland against civilians there and against members of the security forces?

Mr. Prior: My right hon. Friend has, I think, from time to time spoken about the latter part of my hon. Friend's question.
On the first part of my hon. Friend's question, I must tell him there will be many debates on Northern Ireland over the next few months. I think it would be better for the White Paper to be published and for a discussion then to take place on it rather than the reverse, as he suggests.

Mr. Harold Wilson: Following the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas), is the right hon. Gentleman, who has just referred to the Franks Report, able to tell us when we may expect a statement by the Government? It is an important report and has been available for very many months.
Secondly, can he say when he intends to bring forward for the House to debate the unanimous Report of the Committee on Privileges which was signed, I believe, last year but which has not yet come before the House?

Mr. Prior: On the latter point, as I think the right hon. Gentleman knows, we have been trying to see whether we could avoid debating the matter, but I recognise that the House will want to come to a decision on it in the near future. It is a matter which I had hoped very much that I would be able to settle sensibly outside without having to waste the time of the House.
As to the Franks Report, I am not in a position to go any further at this stage. The Government have been considering the proposals, which are extremely complicated. We shall have to consider whether to wait for the Government's proposals or whether to have a debate before then. At present, I have nothing to add.

Mr. Maclennan: Did the right hon. Gentleman hear the views expressed on both sides of the House during Questions to the Minister of Agriculture that there was urgency in the need for the Government to introduce legislation to impose penalties for those found guilty of polluting the North Sea? Are the Government proposing to make time available for that Bill?

Mr. Prior: This relates to the antidumping of waste substances, or whatever the Bill is called. I recognise that this is an important measure. I doubt whether there will be time for it this Session, but it is obviously a Bill that should be introduced as soon as possible.

Mr. Cormack: May I ask my right hon. Friend again when we shall have a debate on the new parliamentary building? It is important that we should settle this matter early.

Mr. Prior: Not for a few weeks, I regret to say.

Mr. Jay: As a great deal of concern has been caused in London by unconfirmed reports of the recommendations of the Layfield Panel on London Motorways, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether that report will be published next week, or whether we shall have a statement on it by the Government?

Mr. Prior: The answer to that is "Both, next week".

Mr. Adley: Reverting to the Fire Precautions (Loans) Bill to be completed this week, may I ask my right hon. Friend to use his good offices to bring about the meeting that was discussed and agreed upon by the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office in Committee between the Department of Trade and Industry, the Treasury and the Home Department for a full discussion on the Government's policy for tourism?

Mr. Prior: I shall draw my hon. Friend's question to my right hon. Friend's attention.

Mr. Peter Archer: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many hon. Members would like an opportunity to express approval of some recent Government announcements in relation to the Icelandic fisheries dispute and examine their implications in a wider context? When, therefore, may the House debate Early Day Motion No. 96:

[That this House, recalling Early Day Motion No. 271 in 1968, signed by nearly 100 hon. Members, notes that, as was there recommended, the ocean floor beyond the limits of national jurisdiction was declared by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1970 to be the common heritage of mankind, but deeply regrets that since then this principle has been steadily eroded, in particular by the actions of Her Majesty's Government in proposing the apportionment of the ocean floor into separate licensed blocks, each to be separately policed by the licensee state, and by listing for discussion at the next Law of the Sea Conference a proposal entitled, Exclusive economic zone beyond the territorial seas, which would effectively remove from mankind the richest part of its heritage, endanger freedom of scientific research, and increase the likelihood of international conflict.]

Mr. Prior: I am afraid that the House has a great deal of business ahead of it for the next five to six weeks and I do not foresee an early opportunity for debating these issues. The coming week is fairly full, and after that we begin to run into a very difficult period in the time of the House, and I cannot see any occasion in Government time when it will be possible to debate this issue.

Mr. Marten: Can my right hon. Friend elaborate on why apparently we have to wait three weeks after the price review has been completed before it is announced? Is not there a danger that it may leak during that period?

Mr. Prior: My hon. Friend must not jump to conclusions. The price review negotiations started only today, and therefore I am not in a position—nor is my right hon. Friend—to say when these negotiations will be concluded. But if we can produce it to the House at an early date we certainly shall. There is always the danger of leaks on these issues, as I know to my cost. I know that my right hon. Friend will want to produce it to the House at the earliest possible opportunity.

Mr. English: I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the fact that after seven weeks in the Common Market I have received two-thirds of the documents so far published in the legislative series of the Official Journal and 50 per cent. of the first two so far published in the communications series. I am glad to note the speed with which these arrived and the fact—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must ask questions on the business statement. This is not the time for congratulations.

Mr. English: I apologise, Mr. Speaker. My congratulations were not wholehearted, as you may have realised. Can the right hon. Gentleman ensure that the House is a little better served? Can he see that something that has been discussed by the Common Market may be worth discussing in this Assembly after seven weeks?

Mr. Prior: As the hon. Gentleman knows, for one reason or another we have had trouble in getting all the documents that we have needed, but they are now beginning to come through a good deal more quickly and my impression is that the vast majority of hon. Members are getting as much information as they require, if not more.

HOVERTRAIN

Mr. David Stoddart: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the decision of Her Majesty's Government, announced to the Select Committee on Science and Technology on 14th February 1973, to cancel the tracked hovertrain.
I was very concerned—and this is relevant to the issue—that the Minister's reply to my Question on Monday of this week was less than frank. I asked what further assistance would be given to this project, to which the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping replied:
The question of the Government's providing financial assistance for the continuation of this project is still under consideration."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February 1973; Vol. 850. c. 223.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must remind the hon. Member that he is not entitled at this stage to make the kind of speech that he would make if his application were successful. He must confine himself to the argument why this matter should be dealt with under Standing Order No. 9.

Mr. Stoddart: Thank you very much for your guidance, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the point that you are making, but I submit that what I am going to say is relevant to the case for a debate on this issue.
In spite of that answer, on 14th February the Minister went to the Select Committee on Science and Technology and said that a decision had been taken on 29th January—which of course was well before my Question was asked—to cancel this programme. The House is entitled to know why the Minister gave perhaps not an untruthful answer but a misleading one to a real and relevant Question. It would appear to some—and indeed it appeared to the Select Committee—that there was an attempt by the Minister to conceal the decision from Parliament.
It is doubtful whether the announcement would have been made had not the Select Committee decided on 5th February to consider this matter. Nevertheless, the announcement has now been made, and I believe that it is in the interests of


the country and of this House that we should now debate the matter as one of urgent and public importance.
I believe that the House should discuss the matter urgently and fully, for these reasons: first, the House is entitled to examine the long-term implications of the decision, especially bearing in mind that we are five years ahead of our competitors, and also because of the probable break up of the expertise of the team that has been working on this problem.
Secondly, we have to consider what is to happen to the scientists and technologists who have been working on this programme, and also what is to happen to the great body of information and expertise which they have built up together.
We should also consider the decision that has been made to hand over to commercial interests valuable national resources that have been paid for out of the pockets of taxpayers. Do the Government think that for the sake of another £4 million both the project and the taxpayers' investment should be lost?
For those reasons I believe that there should be an early and urgent debate on the subject.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member gave notice that he intended to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House to discuss the decision of Her Majesty's Government, announced to the Select Committee on Science and Technology on 14th February, to cancel the tracked hovertrain project. It is not for me to decide whether it is an important matter, or whether it ought to be debated at some stage. All that I have to decide is whether it should be debated under Standing Order No. 9, which means giving it precedence over other matters set down for the business of the House. I am afraid that I cannot give it that precedence.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Molloy: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, may I seek your advice and guidance? We have various means of drawing attention to what some of us

might consider as grave national crises. We can use the machinery of Standing Order No. 9. Another method is to seek to influence the Leader of the House on Thursday afternoon, when he announces the business for the next week, to see whether he will amend what he is proposing so as to meet the requirements of hon. Members who think that a serious situation has arisen.
It seems that both the Chair and hon. Members are placed in a very difficult situation when some of us think that there is a serious industrial crisis and that Parliament ought to promote on its agenda the issue of that industrial crisis, if the only person who can give us any guidance whether such a discussion ought to take place is the Leader of the House. Although you, Mr. Speaker, have no powers to make a Minister answer, it seems pointless to have a procedure by which a request can be made yet no answer whatever be given. Ought it not to be within the rules of procedure that an answer should be forthcoming, even if it is a myopic one and a refusal?

Mr. Prior: There are two occasions next week on which this matter could be raised. The first is a Supply Day when the Opposition has the absolute choice of business to be discussed. On the following day, Thursday, it is by the special request of the Opposition that the debate is to be devoted to the international monetary situation. I do not think it can be said that this is not meeting with the wishes of the House. The House has these methods by which hon. Members on a matter of urgency may seek your advice. I think that the arrangements for business next week meet with the convenience of the House and if necessary they can be altered.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) asked me for guidance and the Leader of the House has given it. I believe that that is quite right because one of my predecessors once said that it is very dangerous for the Chair to give guidance. Nevertheless, I would endorse what the Leader of the House has said. There are Supply Days and by means of them the Opposition may raise grievances.

Orders of the Day — FURNISHED LETTINGS (RENT ALLOWANCES) BILL

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

Clause 1

RENT ALLOWANCES FOR TENANTS OF FURNISHED DWELLINGS IN ENGLAND AND WALES

4.12 p.m.

The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. Paul Channon): I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 7, leave out from 'Until' to:
'(which' in line 13 and insert '29th April 1973 (on which date local authorities are required by paragraph 2 of Schedule I to this Act to bring into operation schemes varying or replacing their existing rent allowance schemes so as to take account of the amendments set out in that Schedule)—
(a) nothing in this Act shall invalidate the existing allowance scheme of a local authority or cause the authority to be regarded as being in breach of section 20(1) of the Housing Finance Act 1972'.

Mr. Speaker: I take it that it will be for the convenience of the House if we discuss with this amendment the Government amendments Nos. 2, 3, 7 and 9.

Mr. Reginald Freeson: On a point of order. I am sorry to delay the House, but I wonder, Mr. Speaker, whether you would give us advice and guidance arising from the selection of amendments which I understand has taken place. Amendment No. 10 in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) other hon. Members and myself has not been selected. That amendment is in the following terms: In page 5, line 8, leave out from 'be' to end of line 13 and insert:
such rent for the dwelling as shall be registered under section 74 of the Rent Act 1968 and the authority shall refer the contract to the Rent Tribunal for the purpose of registering a rent for the dwelling:
Provided (a) that in any case where a contract is referred to a Rent Tribunal under the foregoing provisions section 77 of the Rent Act 1968 shall have effect as if for the words "before the expiry of that period" in the last line of section 77(1) there were sub-

stituted the words "unless the rent tribunal shall so direct" and in section 77(2)(a) for the words "a shorter period shall be substituted for the period of six months specified in the subsection" there were substituted "such notice shall have effect after such period as the Tribunal shall specify having regard to the hardship that would be caused to the landlord or to the tenant by the notice having or not having effect "and in section 78(1) there were substituted for paragraphs (c) and (d) the words "(c) the rent tribunal has given a direction under section 77(2)(a) above" and section 77(4)(b) were repealed.
(b) that until a rent is registered under the foregoing provisions the "rent which is eligible to be met by a rebate or allowance" shall be the rent exclusive of any part thereof attributable to rates'.
I am not seeking, of course, to challenge your decision in any way, but I understand from what transpired earlier in Committee that a similar amendment was not accepted and the reason for it not being selected was that it would involve expenditure in the expansion of the work of rent tribunals, taking it outside the scope of the Money Resolution governing our consideration of this Bill.
I wonder whether I could have your advice? Might it be in order to propose a manuscript amendment making it possible in your view for us to consider the consequential amendment in the light of any such change? The reason I raise this —and I am doing my best not to raise any question of merit or demerit—is that the point covered by the amendment which has not been selected is one which, even though there may be disagreements in the House, it has been accepted is of central concern when dealing with this Bill. It covers a point of policy which was the subject of discussion in committee and on Second Reading—the question of security of tenure or insecurity of tenure. We would very much like to have the opportunity, if a suitable amendment could be devised, to pursue this matter, which is very relevant to the question of rent allowances to tenants.
If it is possible to present a manuscript amendment which would meet the point concerning the Money Resolution, would it then be possible to have this matter reconsidered by the Chair?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has put his point very fairly and very courteously. He has made clear that he is not challenging my selection. I thought however that he might raise this point of order and therefore I considered the


matter beforehand and came equipped with a form of words to deal with the point.
To clarify the matter, I think it is just as well to explain quite clearly the position to the House. I have studied this amendment with care. The Bill as introduced and in its present form provides for tenants of furnished lettings to obtain an allowance towards their rent from local authorities, subject to certain qualifications. The Bill does not provide security of tenure for any tenant; nor are landlords in any way a party to transactions under the Bill. The amendment seeks to grant a measure of security to certain tenants, and therefore materially affects the position of the landlord. It must therefore be considered to be outside the scope of the Bill. I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman has restricted the operations of the amendment to those tenants qualified under the Bill, but this does not in my view bring the amendment into order. That is my attitude towards the amendment that has been tabled.
In regard to a further amendment, I certainly would not give a hypothetical ruling. If the hon. Member brings to me anything by way of a manuscript amendment, I shall certainly consider it.

4.15 p.m.

Mr. Channon: You were kind enough, Mr. Speaker, to suggest that we might consider all the Government amendments together, if that is for the convenience of the House.
The purpose of these four amendments is to make the date of introduction of rent allowance schemes to include furnished tenants 29th April 1973 instead of not later than 1st April 1973.
I think there is no disagreement in any quarter of the House on the need to expedite the passage of this Bill in order to bring the help it contains to furnished tenants as soon as possible. There is, however, an important proviso and we are grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman) for making this important point in Committee. The point raised by the hon. Member and others in Committee is perfectly fair.
We have decided to up-rate the needs allowances in the rebate and allowance schemes not only for furnished but for

unfurnished, private and local authority tenants. This will necessitate the recalculation of all existing rebates and allowances in force when the up-rating is made. We have already announced our intention that this up-rating should take effect from 29th April after the end of the standstill period. So if the Bill is enacted as now drafted, with local authorities required to implement rent allowances for tenants of furnished lettings by 1st April, authorities will be faced with the not inconsiderable burden of calculating these new rent allowances on the existing scale of needs allowances from 1st April and then, four weeks later, recalculating them on the new scale of needs allowances. We do not wish to alter the date for the up-rating of the needs allowances as this deliberately coincides with the end of the standstill when rent increases in both the public and private sectors become payable by some tenants.
Since the hon. Member for Birmingham, Aston raised the point we have consulted the local authority associations on the right course to take. The hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) made a helpful point on this. We have decided to provide adequate time for authorities to implement the Bill and to avoid the double calculation due to the up-rating of the needs allowances by altering the date for introducing the provisions of the Bill from 1st to 29th April. However, as the hon. Member pointed out, none of us wishes that eligible furnished tenants should lose by this deferment. So we propose to provide in the regulations amending the needs allowances that, exceptionally, any rent allowances granted to tenants of furnished lettings who apply before 29th April will be backdated, on the new needs allowance scale, to the first rental period beginning after the date of the tenant's application, provided it is not earlier than 1st April 1973.
This is a reasonable course to take. It will help the local authorities, which are faced with a difficult and novel task in implementing the Bill. It meets the point about the difficulties arising from the changes in the needs allowances and at the same time does not harm the interests of any furnished tenants. It meets the points raised in Committee and seems to be a sensible compromise which


will help both furnished tenants and local authorities.
I hope that the House will find the amendments acceptable.

Mr. Freeson: I thank the Minister for having considered the matter that was raised by my hon. Friends and myself in Committee. We appreciate the steps that have been taken to ensure that local authorities are able to administer the provisions of the Bill more effectively. Secondly, we appreciate that, in spite of the alteration in the date, payments may still be made retrospectively to persons who are eligible.

Mr. Julius Silverman: I am grateful to the Minister for taking up this matter. This is a sensible arrangement; it saves work for the local authorities and entirely meets the point I raised. It is not a constituency matter, because it will not affect Birmingham—Birmingham's scheme is already in operation—but it will affect most other local authorities.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Schedule 1

AMENDMENTS TO HOUSING FINANCE ACT 1972

Amendments made: No. 2, in page 3, line 6, after 'for', insert 'not later than'.

No. 3, in page 3, line 7, leave out '1st' and insert 'on 29th'.—[Mr. Channon]

Mr. Freeson: I beg to move Amendment No. 4, in page 3, line 11, leave out 'being a qualified person within the meaning subsection (12) below'.

Mr. Speaker: With this amendment it will be convenient to take the following amendments:

No. 5, in page 3, line 16, leave out 'being a qualified person within the meaning subsection (12) below'.

No. 6, in page 3, line 33, leave out from 'him' to end of line 35.

No. 8, in page 4, line 3, leave out paragraph 10.

Mr. Freeson: The purpose of the amendments is to widen the scope for rent allowances under the Bill, a matter

which was discussed at some length in Committee and referred to on Second Reading and to which we wish to return in view of the arguments put forward by the Government against our proposals in Committee. On studying those arguments in the printed record, we find them unsatisfactory.
In statistical terms, one might summarise the effect of the Bill as being to make about 120,000 furnished tenants eligible to apply for rent allowances, in addition to the 120,000, approximately, who are in receipt of rent allowances by way of supplementary benefits. Setting aside those who are already in receipt of rent allowances by way of supplementary benefits, we are talking about all the rest of the furnished tenants throughout the country. The Minister, in Committee, said that the Bill would provide for 120,000 more furnished tenants to become eligible.
The total number of furnished lettings in the country is estimated by the Government to be about 600,000. I think that the figure is nearer 700,000, but we will not quarrel about that today. There are about 100,000 receiving rent allowances from the Supplementary Benefits Commission. That leaves about 500,000 furnished tenants who do not receive and are not eligible for rent allowances under the present law. According to the Minister, 120,000 additional tenants will become eligible to claim for rent allowances when the Bill becomes law.
That leaves approximately 380,000 furnished tenants who will get no benefit. and it is to those tenants that our amendments are addressed, as similar amendments were addressed in Committee. We consider this to be an unsatisfactory situation. We have already expressed the view that even in general terms the Bill is unsatisfactory because it does not tackle homelessness and insecurity as it should have done. I have called it a paltry Bill. Setting aside the argument that the Bill should have gone much further, when one considers the figures of eligibility for rent allowances the Bill becomes even more paltry than we thought; 380,000 out of nearly 500,000 furnished tenants will continue to remain ineligible for rent allowances.
Unless the Bill is changed, we shall end up with the majority of furnished


tenants not being eligible for rent allowances, despite the great parading by the Government of their intentions, hopes and desires. In London, which has the largest number of furnished tenancies, the Minister has said there are more than 250,000 furnished tenancies. I believe the figure to be higher—nearer 300,000 to 350,000.
According to the figures which the Government have made available in answer to Questions in the House, there are between 16,000 and 20,000 furnished lettings with rents registered each year. If we allow for movement out of their existing lettings of persons who have been to rent tribunals, a reasonable "guesstimate" is that about 150,000 at most of the 250,000 actually have registered rents.
According to studies made by the Francis Committee, out of a sample of 100 tenants who had been to rent tribunals about 80 were not to be found in their accommodation a year later. I am speaking from memory here as I have not referred to the figures recently. If that represents fair sampling, it indicates that the current number of registered rents is very low compared with the number of furnished lettings.
If, as the amendment suggests, we were to extend the scope of rent allowances based upon the local authority's assessment of fair rents in consultation with rent officers, this would increase the number of applications and referrals to rent tribunals. As we have argued extensively, most furnished tenants are fearful of going to rent tribunals or reporting their rent problems to local authorities. It usually ends with their getting notice to quit, if not immediately, within six months to a year or, at most, 18 months. Despite that, there would be some increase in the number of referrals to rent tribunals either directly by tenants or via local authorities. This in itself is a good reason for extending the scope of rent allowances, because it would bring more clearly to the tenants themselves and local authorities evidence on the situation on rents in their area. They would see that there are a large number of excessive rents operating in their area, and as a result a proportion, at least, of these would be likely to end up by being considered by a rent tribunal, with beneficial results at least of a limited kind.
4.30 p.m.
The consequences, therefore, of extending the rent allowances eligibility that we are putting forward in these amendments and increasing the number of referrals to rent tribunals of excessive, or allegedly excessive, rents would be, first, greater use of their rights by citizens living in these situations in central city areas; secondly, more reasonable or fair rents being registered via rent tribunals; thirdly, more information becoming available to local authorities about their local conditions—and there is certainly great need for information in this field; fourthly, more action by local authorities to get reasonable rents registered; and, fifthly, more action by local authorities to get unhealthy conditions of disrepair rectified.
Sixth, and finally, I come to the point we will not be able to debate anywhere near as fully as we would have wished in view of the selection of amendments to which I referred earlier. Where landlords threaten eviction as a result of applications for rent allowances resulting in referrals to rent tribunals along the lines I have suggested, greater pressure would be put upon local authorities to purchase the properties in question, improve them and hold them in the rental market, where at present they are being sold out of that market at the cost of considerable insecurity to many families and individuals, and all that goes with that insecurity in people's homes.
Those are the six main points of policy which I hope all of us would agree as being sound objectives: a larger number of referrals to rent tribunals of excessive rents, greater use of rights, more action by public health inspectors as a result of information coming in, more action by local authorities in tackling cases of threatened insecurity by purchasing properties in appropriate cases, and consequently greater security, and the holding of a larger rental market in areas where that is being constantly eroded as a consequence of insecurity of tenure and as a consequence, therefore, of the selling out of that market.
I would hope that these broad objectives, however we might seek to achieve them, will be acceptable to both sides of the House. They are certainly acceptable, anyway, to those on this side. What are


the objections? These were discussed in detail in Committee. The Minister argued briefly on Second Reading and more extensively in Committee that if we were to enlarge the scope of rent allowance eligibility along the lines we are urging in these amendments, as we did in Committee, it would introduce greatest pressures on the market and, in particular, it would introduce greater pressures in the inner city areas on families living in furnished accommodation, who must have first priority in any help that is to be given by legislation.
When we pressed the Minister on this the only argument he put forward, the only illustration he gave, was that these greater pressures would put more families at risk in the inner city areas if we introduced rent allowances for all, or virtually all, tenants of furnished accommodation, since this would be an inducement to single people to group together to occupy flats at high rents with which they would be assisted, and that this would put greater pressures on the market so far as families were concerned and drive them out of certain dwellings into an even smaller pool of accommodation. This was his main, and, in fact, his only argument in regard to pressures on the market.

Mr. Arthur Latham: So that we can get the record straight, could my hon. Friend make clear that when he is referring to rent allowances for all furnished tenancies he means making all furnished tenancies eligible under the scheme? There is a very important distinction. There might be some validity in the Minister's argument if those applications were granted automatically, but they are subject to a stringent means test before qualifying. We are talking only of initial eligibility.

Mr. Freeson: That is fair and valid point, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I must be careful in the phraseology I use. We are speaking about people who, under the Bill as drafted, would be eligible to apply; and if the Bill were amended as we would wish, larger numbers of people could be eligible to apply; not that they would all be in receipt of rent allowances after applications had been considered.
The only argument pursued by the Minister in Committee to illustrate his anxiety about not introducing greater pressures by extending the scope of rent allowance eligibility was the fact that it would be an artificial inducement for single people like secretaries, students and others—advertising executives were quoted in Committee—to club together to pay high rents and be assisted with those high rents, thereby making for less accommodation for families in those areas. At a later stage in our proceedings the Minister went on to speak against any easing of the residential qualification for which we had argued, that is, the six months' residential qualification that one must have, in general, before one may apply for a rent allowance—if one sets aside for the moment the discretion on hardship cases that the Bill gives to local authorities.
The Minister went on to argue that the abolition of the six months' residential qualification—and this was the only illustration he gave in Committee—would encourage people to move from outside London or other big cities to stress areas where there was a problem of shortage of accommodation in the furnished sector, which, again, would add to the pressures on families. Answering his second point first, we said in Committee that we did not accept it, and I suggest again that it is a nonsense argument, and that to suggest that a rent allowance would induce a family to move from Glasgow or from any of the high unemployment areas of the country into the London area is just to fly in the face of the facts.
Many of us represent areas—I certainly do—of high unemployment from which homeless families come to London bringing their family with them, or having their family join them soon afterwards, and running into serious difficulties with accommodation. That is happening now, but the pressures are at the other end, in lack of employment opportunities where they come from rather than the existence or non-existence of rented accommodation. This aspect is so marginal as to be a nonsense in considering it as a factor in the situation. We must pay far more concern to the mobility of families in considering this question of the six months' residential qualification. The Francis Committee has referred in detail, as have others who have looked at the question


of homelessness in our cities, to this question of mobility and of people moving constantly from one place to another.
The Government fail to point out, as was made clear in the Greve Report on Homelessness in London, published a little over a year ago, that for many families a high rate of mobility means not that the family moves from furnished accommodation into unfurnished accommodation but that many families stay within the furnished sector and constantly move within it—in other words, they move from one inadequate and socially insecure furnished tenancy to another. Therefore, to adhere to the six-months' residential qualification will put at risk a large number of families who the Minister has said he wants to help in the Bill.
It is not enough to say that there is discretion for local authorities to deal with hardship cases or to say that a local authority such as Brent should use its discretion when receiving a family from Camden. There should be no query or uncertainty in people's minds, for it will be a disincentive to people who already suffer from far too many disincentives in asserting their rights in face of the conditions in which they live. The eligibility should apply as of right. I made this point in Committee. I believe that the Government should accept that the period of residential qualification should be based on the minimum period considered by the local authority associations to be administratively acceptable. The time scale should be laid down in the Bill.
The Minister argued that the fact that single people share accommodation may drive out families and that the situation may be hampered by the introduction of rent allowances on a broader scale. That suggestion also is a bit of a nonsense, and it does not stand up if we examine what is happening in the inner city area. How many secretaries and advertising executives, bearing in mind the joint income that they enjoy, does the Minister think will apply for a rent allowance? Does he think that widening the scope of rent allowances will make any marked impact on the situation in the inner city areas? I find it difficult to believe, and I have seen no evidence in the form of feasibility studies and all the rest on which to make such an assertion.
Many of those who are already sharing accommodation may need help. I refer to students, apprentices and trainees who club together to take accommodation in the inner city area while they are training or studying. They need housing assistance. To refuse them help is to leave unanswered the question of where that help should come from in terms of housing resources and to avoid the question of examining whether it might be done by way of more generous education grants. Whichever way the problem is dealt with, help is certainly needed. The whole subject of the housing of students and of single people should be taken on board by the Department of Environment under the wing of the Minister for Housing and Construction.
The dichotomy between the Department of Education and Science and the Minister for Housing and Construction over the question of student accommodation is foolish, does much damage and holds up progress. There is a specific need for help to be given to students who are living in furnished accommodation.
4.45 p.m.
I would ask the Minister to look at Schedule 3, paragraph 12(1)(b). He will see that under the existing rebate and rents allowance scheme in furnished accommodation deductions are given in respect of non-dependants for each week
for each person aged 21 years or more but under pensionable age and neither undergoing full-time instruction at an educational establishment nor in receipt of supplementary benefit
and the figure there set out is a deduction of £1·50.
It would be feasible for the Minister when a flat is occupied by four or five single people to write into the Bill the necessary qualifications, or disqualifications, to meet the point which he says he is concerned about, if indeed the point has any validity. If he feels that there will be pressures to obtain an additional inducement by means of rent allowances, the Bill could be amended to provide that such persons would not be classified as dependants so that the head tenant, as it were, among a group could claim rent allowance when there was already a good income in that dwelling. I see no difficulty over this


point, and I see no substance to the Government's argument.
I return to the matter of policy objectives. If we sought to enlarge the scope of rent allowances, it would give the opportunity for local authorities to refer more cases to rent tribunals when they had information about exorbitant rents in their area or information about bad living conditions. In that way a large number of fair rents could be registered.
When we raised this matter in earlier stages of the Bill, we were not given a satisfactory reply from either the Minister or the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment. We argued that when tenants, because of fears and anxieties, were reluctant to take action themselves, the responsibility should be undertaken by local authorities. The Under-Secretary of State said that it was a discretion that did not have to be used, and when we asked the Minister whether it was right that local authorities should use their powers when they had information before them he said that local authorities must act in the best interests of their tenants.
I do not know what that reply was supposed to mean. Did it mean that if local authorities feared evictions they should not refer cases to tribunals, or did it mean that they could refer the cases on the basis of information about rent allowances? If an eviction is threatened, surely the local authority, with full ministerial backing, should undertake purchase of the property to protect the tenants and to ensure that the law is applied fairly. That is what we would wish to see, which ties up with our general approach of linking the question of security with the question of rent allowances—but this is not for discussion today because of the selection of amendments. We would wish to see a link established wherever possible between the application for rent allowances, the referral of exorbitant rents to rent tribunals to make sure that reasonable rents were being applied and, where there were threats of eviction or pressure for people to get out as a result of the referral of bad cases to rent tribunals, action by the local authority.
I put it on record here, whatever the Minister may say—and I hope local

authorities, and certainly those which are governed by Labour Party majorities, will take note—that they should make it their business to organise their local authority departments in such a way as to ensure that, where rent allowances are applied for and it is found that exorbitant rents are being paid, and would continue to be paid even with the rent allowances unless there were referral to a rent tribunal, referrals are undertaken by their legal departments, by information about the high rents being passed to the housing department or the treasurer's department, so that when it comes to their notice that, as a consequence of the decisions of rent tribunals fixing lower rents, landlords seek to get rid of their tenants, the local authorities move in and buy the properties up.
This would do three things. It would encourage more furnished tenants to apply for rent allowances, which I am sure the Minister wants, because they would not have so much fear about the consequences; it would ensure more reasonable rents being charged; and, thirdly, it would ensure that the rental market was being held instead of being eroded away by people being priced out of the accommodation and property passing into owner-occupation or some commercial activity. This is our central point, and these are the main reasons why we would wish to see also an extension of the eligibility for rent allowances along the lines we have argued in our amendments.

Mr. Julius Silverman: I support the amendment in the names of my hon. Friends and myself. I shall not detain the House long because I believe the House is anxious to get to the stratosphere very shortly.
The Bill provides a basis for rent allowances which is quite different from that of the rent rebates for council tenants and the rent allowances for people in furnished accommodation. As far as rent rebates for council tenants and rent allowances are concerned, the situation is simple: the qualification is based upon a means test. We do not like the means test, but if one is going to have a rebate scheme that is obviously the only way one can do it. The Bill provides a means test plus, because first there is to be the means test to decide the amount of the


rebate, but a person has to be a qualified person. In addition to the means test, he must be able to prove hardship, and, in addition to that, there is a residential qualification.
We are asking the Minister why this difference is necessary. The Minister has a case to prove. I am bound to say that in Committee the Minister did not begin to prove this at all. Usually the Minister is clear and cogent in his arguments; even if we do not agree with him, there is no doubt about his clarity; but here I am bound to say that he produced no case whatever to justify this.
Why is this necessary? Why should not the unfurnished tenant qualify in precisely the same way as a person in a furnished tenancy or a person living in a council house? Is it that there are going to be large numbers of unfurnished tenants standing at the door of the council house and costing the ratepayer and the Government large sums of money? Experience does not show that, and we have some experience.
We have experience of this in Birmingham, about which the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment knows. Birmingham has been operating a scheme for several years. I have mentioned it before in the House, but I make no apology for doing so again. It is an allowance scheme for private tenants, which includes not only unfurnished tenancies but furnished tenancies. Since 1st October it has been operating the Government scheme—that is to say, in relation not only to rent rebates but to rent allowances—instead of its own regional scheme, which means that until 1st December this would be at the ratepayers' expense. This again has included furnished tenancies without any of the qualifications contained in this Bill, and the total number of people who have been granted allowances so far, out of an estimated number of 18,500 unfurnished tenancies, is 20. So the whole thing really is ridiculously small and there are not large numbers, although none of these qualifications has applied.
This makes me wonder what on earth is in the Government's mind and why it is necessary to have this apparatus, this paraphernalia, with the Government making orders and giving guidance to the local authorities as to the various categories. Why are these necessary at all?
My hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) has mentioned what I said in Committee, but the only case the Minister mentioned was the case of several people clubbing together. As he pointed out, this is a nonsense because already, as the Bill now stands, with £1·50 on every other resident in the house who is not a student or an old-age pensioner, there will not be any rebate for these people at all anyway. Supposing there are people who club together and are in hardship; why should they not get the benefit? Why all this paraphernalia just in order to disqualify perhaps a few applicants? It does not make sense at all. The Minister must justify this or look at it again to see whether, even at this late stage, he cannot exclude this from the Bill. The most it would mean is that perhaps a few hundred people would qualify who might not otherwise do so. Why is it necessary to complicate the Bill to do this?
The problem for the Government is going to be the low take-up in this particular case, not that of spending large sums of money, and obviously this will diminish the take-up even further. This provision in the Bill is really a piece of nonsense and unnecessary. The residential qualification again will probably reduce the number of people who are entitled to this and could benefit from it. Why should it be six months? I and my hon. Friends appreciate that there must be some residential qualification; one cannot have a man changing his residence every month, for instance, and going to the council every time he does so and asking it to re-assess the amount of rebate to which he is entitled; but I would have thought that a month or six weeks would be a suitable residential qualification as far as this is concerned. Six months is far too harsh. The present qualification provision is unnecessary. I do not believe that it will result in any large expenditure if it is removed, and I ask the Government to look at this again.

5.0 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Brown: I too would like to support my hon. Friends. The Government have made a big thing out of introducing this rent allowance but in the small print they are mitigating the effects of what they set out to do. Many of us have


encouraged people to take advantage of these allowances but now it seems that some of these people will find themselves out of court. It will be hard to explain to them that the Government have mounted this enormous publicity exercise, saying that they want to help everyone in need, and yet have deliberately inserted qualifications which they must realise will reduce the chances of such people being helped.
How many people are we talking about? The Department must have done some sort of exercise on this. It must know how many persons throughout the country are expected to be in this category It must know exactly how much it will cost I hope that the Minister can tell me.

Mr. Freeson: The Minister had this information elicited from him in Committee. If we exclude those already receiving rent allowances by way of supplementary benefits, there will, according to the Minister, be probably 120,000 persons eligible. That will leave about 380,000 persons in furnished lettings ineligible.

Mr. Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and am anxious that those figures should be on the record. That is something about which we can argue all night. I do not accept that it is reasonable to bring in allowances and then deliberately to debar people from applying for them. I hope that we can look again at this. It seems that out of the total number of people who could be helped the Minister is prepared to help only one-third, assuming that they do not get caught in this device he has produced.
I support my hon. Friends on the subject of the residential qualifications. Furnished tenancies present great problems. My constituency suffers greatly because there are so many of them. People are frequently being turned out of them, and it is almost impossible to cope with the housing difficulties because of the number of homeless families being picked up from the streets, having been turned out of furnished accommodation. Every time I try to get people rehoused I am told that it is impossible mainly because others have been turned out of furnished accommodation. Many such people turn to the council, and when they cannot get help there they have to take the

first thing that comes along in furnished accommodation. Within months they are turned out of that.
These people are in need of and are entitled to our help. It is no fault of theirs that the landlords are conspiring to do this, under the Government. The Government are allowing them to do it; they could stop it if they wished. They have brought forward these allowances, and it is incumbent upon them to make certain that all those in furnished accommodation are allowed to claim and have that claim decided.

Mr. Channon: It is pleasant to have the lion. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown) joining our debates. He asked one or two questions to which, as the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) pointed out, I have given the answers. I will give them again in due course. It is not quite fair to say that those answers were elicited from me. I believe that I volunteered them. I will volunteer them again.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Aston (Mr. Julius Silverman) said that the onus was upon me to prove my case. I am not so sure about that. The important thing is that we should do nothing in this Bill that will damage the interests of families living in furnished accommodation. The proposition that flows from that is that if there is any doubt about what is the right course to take the benefit of the doubt must be given in favour of not taking action that might possibly damage the interests of families.
As I understand the Opposition case, it is that there should be no qualifications at all, provided the usual financial ones are met, for any category of furnished tenant applying for rent allowance. As I pointed out to the House during the Second Reading debate and in Committee, I am afraid of doing anything that would increase the pressure on furnished accommodation beyond that which now exists. I would not want to do anything which would make the position of families living in furnished accommodation even marginally more difficult.
All we are doing, if we pass this Bill, is to set up an initial system. If experience shows that the Government have been too restrictive in the categories they


have put forward, there are plenty of opportunities for increasing those categories later. That could be done by order. There is no need for a Bill. I undertake to lay such an order if that is any guarantee to hon. Members. If experience shows that those initial categories are too restrictive, I guarantee that we will come forward with further categories at the appropriate moment.

Mr. Freeson: That is not a meaningful guarantee unless we are told that there will be a report back within a specific period of time. We have heard time and again, not from the hon. Gentleman but certainly from his predecessor, that certain matters, dealing with this subject would be put to the House in due course. The Francis Committee is a good example. There have been no legislative proposals arising from that report laid before the House yet the Committee reported 18 months ago. How can we accept that assurance in the light of such a state of affairs?

Mr. Channon: I do not think it is very fair of the hon. Member to say that. The Francis Committee's report is highly controversial. Parts of it are welcomed by the Opposition; parts of it are bitterly detested by them. A similar position exists on these benches. Parts of it we support; about other parts we have grave doubts. It requires a complicated piece of legislation. The hon. Member has been in Government, perhaps longer than me—

Mr. Clinton Davis: Longer than I.

Mr. Channon: I apologise to the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis) whose grammatical skill is well known to the House.
The hon. Member for Willesden, East knows that there is all the difference in the world between producing controversial legislation and finding time to put it before the House. There cannot be any dispute about that.
I return to my initial point, that as we are beginning on this road it is better to increase later, rather than go too far at first, find that we might have put too much pressure on families and then have to retract. I undertake that if experience shows that the Government are being

too restrictive we will come back and seek the advice of the Advisory Committee on Rent Rebates and Allowances which I am hoping will be set up in the reasonably near future.
In case the hon. Member for Shore-ditch and Finsbury or other hon. Members not deeply involved in the details of the Bill have not quite taken in all the categories of people who will be eligible for rent allowances, I must make it clear that the first thing that local authorities will have the right to do is to give rent allowances to people who, they believe, are in hardship.

Mr. Julius Silverman: Any person who comes within the category of the means tests already applied, such as council house and unfurnished tenants who are given rent allowances has to prove means, and those means amount to the fact that it would be hardship for him to pay his rent.

Mr. Channon: I am coming on to deal with the details of the categories of people entitled to rent allowances. Anyone who is in real difficulty will be able to apply for an allowance. If a local authority considers that an applicant would suffer hardship if no allowance were granted, it will have a duty to grant one.

Mr. Thomas Cox: I have been listening with great interest, and I am sure that the rent allowances will be of some assistance. The hon. Gentleman in his opening remarks said that he wished to do nothing that would prejudice a tenant living in furnished accommodation. With great respect, the Bill is extremely limited in the help it offers. There is no reference to the obligation of the landlord. I realise that security. However, there is no obligation we are not allowed to comment on to repair all furnished tenancies. In the constituency which I represent that is a continuous problem to be faced. These are the kind of issues with which we hoped the Government would deal, thereby giving great help to the people we seek to help.

Mr. Channon: The hon. Gentleman may be right. Maybe we should come forward with wide housing legislation to deal with some of the points he has in mind. Throughout, I have made no great


boasts about the Bill. It is a modest measure designed to give rent allowances to furnished tenants. I have never made any extravagant claims for the Bill. But I believe that it will be of great value to the occupiers of furnished tenancies.

Mr. Clinton Davis: The hon. Gentleman is obviously reposing great confidence in local authorities. One knows from experience that certain local authorities take a hard line about homelessness and that others take a liberal line. Is it not a reasonable inference to draw from this situation that whereas in a liberal area like Hackney the local authority might——

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Labour.

Mr. Davis: It is Labour but liberal with a small "1". Hackney is likely to take a reasonable attitude about these matters. Is it not also likely that an area like Richmond, which does not even fulfil its obligations towards homeless families, will take an altogether different attitude? Is it not wrong to leave such wide discretion to local authorities?

Mr. Channon: I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. He seems to suggest that the discretion of local authorities should be removed, that the central Government should lay down a rigid system and that only the central Government can tackle the problem. If the hon. Gentleman wants me to have more power and the Hackney Borough Council less, I will consider the matter. I doubt whether he will find that proposition very popular. I do not accept the proposition he puts forward.
I shall now explain again to the House the categories of people——

Mr. A. W. Stallard: The argument posed about hardship sounds, to say the least, a bit unreal. Many of the people in my constituency are in very great hardship, particularly the categories mentioned. The biggest hardship is to find furnished accommodation because of the policies being pursued by the Government. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Government's policies are making it impossible for anybody, certainly in St. Pancras, North, to find furnished accommodation?

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Channon: I do not accept that. It has been pointed out that the amount of furnished accommodation in London is increasing. I do not think that it is increasing in Central London, but there is no doubt that overall the amount of furnished accommodation is increasing. I accept that the situation is unsatisfactory. I have never denied that. We could have a long debate about the whole housing problem of London and the difficulties of getting furnished accommodation, but the Bill merely seeks to give rent allowances to tenants living in furnished accommodation.
The Opposition appear to be arguing the case that all those in furnished accommodation should qualify for rent allowance——

Mr. Freeson: Not all of them.

Mr. Channon: All who qualify on financial grounds. The hon. Member for Aston was fair enough to point out that there should be a residential qualification, though he says that six months is too long. [Interruption.] I took down his words. He said "There has to be some residential qualification." The hon. Member for Willesden, East thinks that we are wrong about six months.

Mr. Freeson: We are both at one in that we say that the period of waiting should depend purely on administrative grounds. The idea of a six months' residential period has nothing to do with the administrative problems involved. I had in mind one month to six months.

Mr. Channon: The hon. Member for Aston seemed to suggest that there should be some qualification, but not as long as six months.
I have naturally considered carefully all that hon. Members said on Second Reading and in Committee about qualifying categories. I still remain unconvinced, at the start of this scheme—which we all know has been very difficult to bring into effect, which is one of the reasons it has not been done before—that hon. Members' proposals are right.
We would be in danger of causing some hardship to families in the centre of London I think it would he wrong for me to proceed along those lines. I think I am right in saying that nearly one in


two of all tenants of furnished accommodation are families. If I am right, we would be increasing the pressure on furnished accommodation in the stress areas of London. The Opposition say that I am wrong and that it would cause no further pressure on furnished accommodation. I find it hard to understand how anyone can argue that. If there is any extra inducement to people to occupy furnished accommodation, automatically there must be some extra pressure. Therefore my approach of being more selective and trying to help families more than anyone else is to be preferred, since they would be put at some risk if the blanket approach for which some hon. Members have been arguing were adopted.
We have agreed that anyone who would otherwise suffer hardship should qualify. The local authorities have asked for guidance in this matter although they have discretion to decide. Certain categories of tenants will be eligible for an allowance as of right: families with dependent children, including single-parent families, who have been resident for six months in the local authority's area—a period which the hon. Gentleman regards as unsatisfactory. Also, old-age pensioners or tenants who are or have a registered handicapped person living with them or whose household includes a pensioner who meets this residential qualification would automatically be included. Single tenants and couples with no dependent child or pensioner living with them would qualify after a longer period of residence in the local authority's area, and probably also if they fell within an age limit. I have mentioned these categories in the House previously.
I will, without any commitment, look again at the question of six months and whether it is too long. I also intend to include the registered handicapped and those who have such a person living with them as a category to be prescribed in the regulations to qualify for an allowance as of right. In Committee the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham) questioned whether the registration procedure was relevant and appropriate.
The local authority will—in any event, as I have said—grant an allowance to any furnished tenant whom it considers would suffer hardship if he did not get an allowance. My right hon. Friend will

give guidance, in a circular, to local authorities about the tenants who in his view should or might be regarded as cases of hardship. There will be consultation with the Department of Health and Social Security and with the local authority associations before the guidance is issued.
When it comes to assessing hardship the local authority will be under no restriction regarding residence, age or household composition. I think it was the hon. Member for Aston who said that if that was the position, why bother to do it? That argument cuts both ways. The Bill is drafted in a flexible way. The categories of those who are eligible as of right can be altered and added to as necessary in the light of experience. There is no reason why the original categories should be inflexible. I am anxious to make help available quickly to all those who are hardest pressed.
If something is to be done quickly—I think the House is keen on that—it is essential not to overload local authorities, especially the inner London boroughs and Birmingham, which have very large numbers of furnished lettings in their areas. Some of these authorities are very concerned about their capacity to take on this work. All this points to making a restricted start without jeopardising the position of those in real need. As the evidence becomes clearer, we can go further at a later date.
The hon. Member for Aston has pointed to the figures of take-up for Birmingham. I have not got them with me today. However, I do not dispute what he said about them. He knows Birmingham better than I do. I do, however, have the figures for Bromley, which is an interesting example of a London borough.

Mr. Thomas Cox: It is not representative of the housing problem in Wandsworth.

Mr. Channon: It is an interesting example of a borough with a large number of private unfurnished tenants even if it is not similar to the hon. Gentleman's constituency. It is estimated that there are 8,000 private unfurnished tenants in Bromley. There have already been 3,200 applications from those tenants, of which 1,200 have so far been


granted. Bromley began its rent allowance scheme on 1st October 1972. That is fairly encouraging.
I accept that it is crucial to increase the take-up. I accept that it will be difficult. I am still examining what the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) said on Second Reading, for instance, about having field officers. It is an interesting and constructive suggestion which I shall explore. However, I accept that it is essential that we should do our utmost to increase the take-up.
The hon. Member for Willesden, East raised the question of a family moving from one stress area to another—say, from Camden to Brent. If a family which has been getting an allowance in Camden moves to Brent, the Government's view is that it should be regarded as likely to suffer hardship if it does not get an allowance in Brent. I think that meets the hon. Gentleman's point. I cannot believe that local authorities will not act on that guidance.

Mr. Freeson: This is an important though narrow point. I should like to put two points to the Minister on what he has said. He quoted an example of a Camden citizen moving across the boundary into Brent coming within the guidance on hardship and, in the Government's view, being entitled to continue with a rent allowance. First, would a person moving from Aston into Camden or Brent who had previously qualified for and been receiving a rent allowance be entitled to continue with a rent allowance under this guidance?
Secondly, would a person living in borough X who, had he applied, would have qualified for a rent allowance and who moves to borough Y be entitled to apply straight away and obtain a rent allowance? I suggest that it should not depend solely on whether he has exercised his right in his previous accommodation. He might he moving into more or equally difficult circumstances than those from which he had come. It should not depend on whether he had taken up his right in a previous borough before being eligible to apply and to be considered under the hardship rules in the borough to which he had moved.

Mr. Channon: The first point is quite clear. If someone is in receipt of a rent

allowance and he moves from one part of the country to another, the guidance will say that, prima facie, he will suffer hardship if he does not get a rent allowance in the other borough providing his circumstances regarding income and other relevant characteristics remain unchanged.
On the second point regarding someone who notionally could have been entitled to a rent allowance but did not apply and what his condition would be if he moved to another borough, I shall have to think about that. But in all these cases the local authority has a discretion to grant a rent allowance to people who are in real difficulty.
The hon. Member for Willesden, East, both in Committee and in the House, asked about the power of referral to rent tribunals. Under Section 72 of the 1968 Act local authorities have power to refer rents to rent tribunals. The powers are discretionary so that local authorities can act in the best interests of the tenants. That is why, in Committee, I said that local authorities must act in the interests of the tenants.
It is hard to see how the central Government could be better placed than local authorities to reach a view on the best interests of tenants in any area. I think that local authorities can be trusted to do what they believe to be in the best interests of the tenants of their area. Local authorities will have to consider this matter when the rent allowance scheme comes into effect. I shall want to watch the operation of the system closely in the light of what happens. I do not think that any local authority has made representations about potential difficulties on this aspect of managing the rent allowance scheme. I have not had any representations that this is likely to cause any problem for local authorities.
I believe that it is wiser for the House at this stage in the proceedings, entering into a completely uncharted sphere, to start in a modest way and to move to a more advanced scheme in the light of experience. I do not want to do anything which might increase the pressure on furnished accommodation and damage the interests of families in furnished accommodation. I hope that no one in this House will advocate anything that might make the position of families in furnished accommodation more difficult than it is.
For those reasons I believe that we should concentrate the help, which rent allowances can give, to the categories which I have outlined. I hope, therefore, that the House will not accept the amendment but will allow the Government to proceed in the way I have described.

Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann: The Minister in his opening speech said that he did not know that it was for him to prove his case regarding the amendment. I think the House will agree he has not done so. We have been waiting for him to give us examples of circumstances in which the pressure on furnished accommodation would be increased as a result of making all those who would be eligible on income grounds eligible within the terms of the Bill. The hon. Gentleman has not done that. We had some illustrations in Committee, but they were mostly fatuous examples. We cannot conceive of any circumstances in which people will gather together to claim rent allowances in the furnished sector in such a way as to cause any significant increase in the demand for furnished tenancies which could not be met by measures which the Government could easily adopt if they were not already provided in Schedule 3 to the Housing Finance Act.
5.30 p.m.
As it stands, the Bill is in any event a one-legged measure which, without the necessary complement of security of tenure, cannot achieve the object which it is repeatedly said in the House we wish to achieve. We may not discuss security of tenure. The amendment is an attempt to provide the other leg or at least to provide a crutch. Unless the Government accept the amendment we shall be unable to introduce effective alleviation of the hardship to low-income tenants in furnished accommodation in stress areas.
We know from experience that any means-tested measure involves the problem of low take-up. The Minister has quoted figures for the take-up of rent allowances in Bromley, but the qualification for rent allowances is solely a matter for income. I am sure the Minister will know, because he has had to try to approve the publicity for it, that the terms upon which allowances are made available under the Housing Finance Act are

complicated enough. Every hon. Member has had to explain them to constituents and has found it difficult to determine whether someone is eligible for an allowance or not.
Now, when dealing with tenants in furnished accommodation under the Bill, we have to consider not only the income and the occupational elements of the rent, as adjusted by the provisions of the Act, but we must also determine whether the tenant falls into one of the various categories and, if he does not, whether the hardship is such that the local authority might in its grace decide to make an allowance. In practice people will not apply. These matters nearly always depend upon word-of-mouth contact. If someone knows that the person next door has got the allowance and is able to ascertain that he too is eligible, he will make an application for it. If on the other hand he finds that someone next door applied but after an exhaustive procedure was turned down, he will not apply. The case for including all those who would be eligible on income grounds is therefore very strong and the case against doing so is negligible.
We have heard of far-fetched examples but no concrete suggestion has been made of any circumstances in which the pressure on housing could be significantly increased by such an inclusion. The increased pressure on housing has resulted from measures deliberately taken by the Government, primarily through the Housing Finance Act, and because house prices and furnished rents are excluded from the freeze. That has been the cause of the growing pressure in stress areas. It has not been caused by a group of highly-paid people clubbing together and, because the rent is so high, possibly making themselves eligible for a rent allowance.
The categories of those who were eligible were put forward by the Minister on Second Reading when he said that one category was
all families with children including all single-parent families who have been living in the local authority's area for at least six months". —OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd January 1973; Vol. 849, c. 235.]
Earlier today the Minister said that if people had been eligible for an allowance and they moved to another local authority area, assuming that the conditions were


the same they would continue to be entitled to an allowance, presumably under the hardship category. But the conditions would be unlikely to be the same. First, the rent would necessarily be different to some extent and in all probability the tenant would have moved to find work.
The other argument advanced by the Minister in Committee against extending rent allowances to all who would be eligible on income grounds was that to do so would be to encourage mobility of labour into the stress areas. But the movement would be not only into but also out of those stress areas. If a family could leave North Kensington and find housing accommodation in Hastings or another part of the country where there was less housing stress, they would not know until they arrived whether they would be eligible for an allowance. This is one of the major difficulties because the family would not know without travelling to Hastings and asking the local authority, and without having been there for some time whether they would be eligible. To travel that distance is an expensive business for someone on a low income.
Even if this were to add to the possibility of someone moving out of an area in the North where there was no work and coming to London where there was work, is the Minister saying that he would deprive such people of the benefit when they were moving into an area where rents would necessarily be driven up because other people were being subsidised? The Government must accept that if they subsidise some people, prices will necessarily rise. Under the present system people in council housing, those in private unfurnished accommodation and some low-income tenants in private furnished accommodation are subsidised. To leave out a few low-income families, which is what the Bill seeks to do, is to ensure that these families will suffer greater hardship than they would have done if the Bill had not been passed.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Reginald Eyre): Will the hon. Member concede that the points he has been making illustrate the in-

creased pressure in stress areas that could arise as a result of people moving into them with the benefit of the proposals in the Bill? Is that not a good reason for therefore giving the benefit to families as the Government propose?

Mr. Douglas-Mann: The Minister is suggesting that there should be no subsidies because subsidies increase the pressure of demand. No doubt a good case could be made to that effect. If, however, there are to be subsidies, to exclude one small category which would be entitled on income grounds is to create more hardship for that sector than if there was no help at all. The addition of this minute section—perhaps 1 per cent. of 1 per cent.—will not result in increased demand. A difference might arise from higher take-up but not from increasing the number of those qualified. Increased demand has been created by the measures contained in the Housing Finance Act. Tenants in privately rented accommodation will be expected to pay more rent and the expected return on property is rising as a result. Therefore the value of property is rising. The Government knew that this would happen and they acted deliberately to make it happen.
The Bill as it stands is a small, useful measure. The Minister described it as a modest measure but I would describe it as a small, mean measure which partially creates a serious injustice. Our amendment would at least ensure that the correction of that injustice was complete. There would still be grave problems of take-up and it would still be an inadequate measure without security of tenure. But our amendment would ensure that the majority of those who were in need would be eligible for help. They would know that they were eligible and the Bill would therefore be more significantly beneficial than it is.
The Opposition propose to press the amendment to a Division. I hope that the House will support it.

Question put, That the Amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 120, Noes 143.

Division No. 57.]
AYES
[5.41 p.m.


Atkinson, Norman
Bishop, E. S.
Bradley, Tom


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Blenkinsop, Arthur
Broughton, Sir Alfred


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Booth. Albert
Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)




Carmichael, Nell
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
O'Halloran, Michael


Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Orme, Stanley


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
John, Brynmor
Oswald, Thomas


Concannon, J. D.
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Padley, Walter


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Palmer, Arthur


Cronin, John
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Pardoe, John


Cunningham, G. (Islington, S.W.)
Kaufman, Gerald
Parker, John (Dagenham)


Oalyell, Tarn
Kerr, Russell
Pavitt, Laurie


Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Kinnock, Neil
Pendry, Tom


Davidson, Arthur
Lamborn, Harry
Perry, Ernest G.


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Lamond, James
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Latham, Arthur
Prescott, John


Deakins, Eric
Lawson, George
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey
Leadbitter, Ted
Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)


Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Roper, John


Edelman, Maurice
Leonard, Dick
Rose, Paul B.


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lipton, Marcus
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Ewing, Harry
Lomas, Kenneth
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Faulds, Andrew
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Fisher, Mrs. Dorls (B'ham, Ladywood)
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N.E.)


Foot, Michael
McCartney, Hugh
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Freeson, Reginald
Mackie, John
Silverman, Julius


Gilbert, Dr. John
Mackintosh, John P.
Skinner, Dennis


Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Maciennan, Robert
Spearing, Nigel


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Marquand, David
Stallard, A. W.


Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Steel, David


Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.
Mayhew, Christopher
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Meacher, Michael
Tuck, Raphael


Harper, Joseph
Meillsh, Rt. Hn. Robert
Wellbeloved, James


Harrison. Walter (Wakefield)
Millan, Bruce
Whitlock, William


Hattersley, Roy
Mitchell, R C. (S'hampton, lichen)
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Heffer, Eric S.
Molloy, William
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Hooson, Emlyn
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)



Horam, John
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Mr. John Golding and


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Moyle, Roland
Mr. Michael Cocks.


Janner, Greville






NOES


Adley, Robert
Foster, Sir John
McCrindle, R. A.


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
McMaster, Stanley


Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian
Goodhew, Victor
Macmillan. Rt. Hn. Maurice (Farnham)


Astor, John
Gray, Hamish
McNair-Wilson, Michael


Alkins, Humphrey
Green, Alan
Marten, Nell


Awdry, Daniel
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Grylls, Michael
Maude, Angus


Batsford, Brian
Gummer, J. Selwyn
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Hannam, John (Exeter)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Biffen, John
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Biggs-Davison, John
Haselhurst, Alan
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)


Blaker, Peter
Hastings, Stephen
Moate, Roger


Body, Richard
Hawkins, Paul
Molyneaux, James


Boscawen, Hn. Robert
Heseltine, Michael
Money, Ernie


Bowden, Andrew
Hicks, Robert
Monks, Mrs. Connie


Bray, Ronald
Holland, Philip
Monro, Hector


Brlnton, Sir Tatton
Holt, Miss Mary
More, Jasper


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Hordern, Peter
Murton, Oscar


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hornby, Richard
Neave, Airey


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hornsby-Smith. Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Channon, Paul
Howell, David (Guildford)
Page, Rt. Hn. Graham (Crosby)


Churchill, W. S.
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Parkinson, Cecil


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Hunt. John
Percival, Ian


Clegg, Walter
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Pike, Miss Mervyn


Cooke, Robert
Iremonger, T. L.
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Coombs, Derek
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Sir Frederick
Jessel, Toby
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Cormack, Patrick
Jopling, Michael
Ralson, Timothy


Costain, A. P.
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James


Crouch, David
Kilfedder, James
Redmond, Robert


Crowder, F. P.
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Dixon, Piers
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Kinsey, J. R.
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Rost, Peter


Eyre, Reginald
Knox, David
Russell, Sir Ronald


Farr, John
Lamont, Norman
Sinclair, Sir George


Fell, Anthony
Lane, David
Soref, Harold


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Spence, John


Fidler, Michael
Le Marchant, Spencer
Sproat, Iain


Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Stanbrook, Ivor


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Longden, Sir Gilbert
Sutcliffe, John


Fookes, Miss Janet
Luce, R. N.
Tapsell, Peter







Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Tugendhat, Christopher
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N.W.)
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Tebbit, Norman
Vickers, Dame Joan
Worsley, Marcus


Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret
Waddington, David



Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)
Walder, David (Clitheroe)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Trafford, Dr. Anthony
Ward, Dame Irene
Mr. Tim Fortescue and


Trew, Peter
Weatherill, Bernard
Mr Marcus Fox.

Amendment accordingly negatived.

Amendments made: No. 7, in page 3, line 38, leave out not later than 1st 'and insert ' on 29th'.

No. 9, in page 4, line 44, leave out 1st' and insert '29th'.—[Mr. Channon.]

Motion made and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 56 (Third Reading), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Orders of the Day — CONCORDE AIRCRAFT BILL

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): We come first to the new Clause:

New Clause

SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

It at any time the additional expenditure sanctioned under section 1 of this Act exceeds £300 million a Select Committee of the House of Commons shall be appointed to inquire into the generality of the Concorde project, the expenditure and Parliamentary control and scrutiny thereof.

5.51 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn: I understand that with the clause we may discuss Amendment No. 2, Clause 1, in page 2, line 4, at end insert:
'(4) Immediately upon the enactment of this Act the Government shall cause a White Paper to be published reviewing the history of the project, the current prospects, expectations and finance of the aircraft and thereafter shall cause such a White Paper to be published annually'.
and Amendment No. 3, in page 2, line 4, at end insert:
(4) Within six months of the enactment of this Act the Secretary of State shall cause to be published his proposals for enabling the supply of information about the Concorde aircraft project to each House of Parliament

to be improved in order that each House should properly scrutinize the manner in which the project is conducted'.
The new clause and the amendments go over ground that has been covered in Committee. I do not think the House will want to devote a great deal of time to a re-examination of the questions they raise but it would be wrong to leave them without reiterating the Opposition's view that parliamentary supervision of the project is not adequate and that more information should be made available to the House.
The arguments advanced by the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping against yielding to our recommendations have been based on a number of factors, the biggest of which was his judgment that any further information the Government might be asked to give on the matter would endanger the commercial prospects of the aircraft. Having earlier shared the awesome responsibilities that the hon. Gentleman holds, I can well understand how attractive such an argument might be to a Minister looking for reasons why he should not give the House further information. As I said on Second Reading. I was rebuked by the Select Committee for failing to give adequate information. In accepting that rebuke, which was not far from my own feelings, I support the new Clause with added force.
Ministers' arguments against providing information to the House vary according to the issue being debated. In the case of the Atomic Energy Authority (Weapons Group) Bill, which we debated recently, the arguments were based on military security. When we discussed railways plans and the leakage of information to the Railway Gazette, the Prime Minister said that we could not have civil servants abstracting documents and giving them to outside interests to report, because that would not be conducive to good government.
None of those arguments applied to the hovertrain, which the Minister announced yesterday to the Select Committee had been cancelled on 29th January. The decision had been taken and there was


no opportunity for the Select Committee or Parliament to review it.
The arguments advanced for Government secrecy no longer bear examination when considered in the way in which successive Ministers have argued them. When we are spending substantial sums of public money, where a large number of highly-skilled people are involved, where there are alternatives upon which it is open to the country to express itself through Parliament and Government, where there are alternatives open to us, we should be given more information. That statement applies with equal force to the Concorde aircraft, which we are now considering in the context of funds for production finance.
Curiously, that argument unites those who are critical of the aircraft and those who, on the Opposition side at any rate, hope that it will succeed and support the provision of further funds.
I should like to make a special case for more information about Concorde itself. When the Minister says—I have said it in my time—that the sale of the aircraft to the airlines is critically important, he is stating the truth. The sale of the aircraft is the thing upon which we rely to get back the investment we have put into the aircraft. But nothing could be clearer than that with Concorde we are not only engaged in a single commercial transaction, for two reasons. First, to be saleable Concorde must be acceptable not simply to the airlines, like Pan American, that might buy it but broadly to the whole American public, because it is they who, through their environmental and other lobbies, have campaigned so vigorously through Congress and elsewhere to prevent supersonic aircraft from landing. Therefore, we are dealing not just with an airline but with a customer country and all the people who live in it.
Similarly, although we may talk about its being a commercial transaction, that is not so from the point of view of the British public, because the investment in Concorde is public money. If we wish the aircraft to succeed, as I most certainly do, we must carry the British public with us to finance it, and sell it to the American public for it to be acceptable to the United States' or other airlines. It is a nation-to-nation exercise, which cannot

be successful if an air of secrecy surrounds the whole operation.
Concorde's real prospect of success now depends upon one thing more than any other—the Government's determination to go through with it and make a success of it. While the Government and successive Ministers cover themselves with an aura of secrecy they create the impression that there is something to hide, when I believe that in essentials there is nothing to hide about the aircraft.

Mr. J. Bruce-Gardyne: The right hon. Gentleman has just pronounced a rather curious proposition: that the success of the project depended on the determination with which the Government went through with it. Surely, it is not the Government's determination that will decide what sales are made to overseas airlines. That must depend upon the commercial judgment of those overseas airlines that are potential purchasers.

Mr. Benn: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman intervened, because I do not want anyone to be under any misapprehension about what I said. I want to amplify it, and perhaps return to it on Third Reading. I am saying that at this stage, when we have had the disappointment of the cancellation of the options of Pan American, American Airlines and TWA, and the unresolved questions of Japanese Airlines and so on, the key factor is the Government's steadiness of nerve and determination. We can only express our own views. I have no doubt that when Concorde enters into service under BOAC and Air France and, I hope, other colours in 1975, the aircraft will be acquired by other airlines.

Mr. Ronald Brown: Does not my right hon. Friend think it disgraceful that the Government were so weak-kneed that they cancelled the hovertrain so quickly, because they did not have the guts to sell abroad?

Mr. Benn: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. He may have just entered the Chamber and so not have known that I referred to the hover-train a little earlier. I knew that the Chair would not allow me to carry that argument much further forward.
My hon. Friend's point is very important as it bears upon secrecy. We are


told that there must be secrecy to preserve the prospects of the aircraft. In the case of the hovertrain there was secrecy until the final decision to cancel it had been taken. Both matters reinforce my view that secrecy is wrong when dealing with major technological projects. That view, certainly on the Opposition side, unites people who may have a different opinion on whether the Concorde project should have been undertaken or exactly what should be done now.

Sir Frederick Corfield: Will the right hon. Gentleman elaborate on the factors about which he thinks there is secrecy, and where he thinks there should be more publicity? There is a distinction between technical factors and what, whether he likes it or not, are commercial factors.

6.0 p.m.

Mr. Benn: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Gloucestershire, South (Sir F. Corfield), who is a member of the little inner club of Ministers who have shared these responsibilities.
The technical side of Concorde is a success. First, I do not think anybody has any doubt that it is the most highly tested aircraft ever to have been produced. Its fuselage has been broken to destruction in the great tank built at Farnborough for the purpose, its engines have been tested at Pyestock and elsewhere and it is undoubtedly the safest aircraft, if testing secures safety. Therefore, from the technical point of view, the more information we can make available to the world the better. Indeed, by deciding to sell the aircraft to China, where no doubt they will examine with great care its craftsmanship and design in order to advance their own aviation technology, we are of course making the aircraft available technically for inspection.
Now we come to what are called the commercial factors. Here I believe there is a genuine confusion which I was seeking to clear up. We cannot pretend with this aircraft that there is now, to be candid, any chance of recovering our research and development expenses in total. No one disputes this. I do not think there has ever been any argument about that, and my hon. Friend the Mem-

ber for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) has never believed for one moment at any stage that there was. But it is still widely recognised that we have made a major national investment in a new generation of supersonic aircraft and high-powered engines. This is not a commercial exercise in that sense. It is not a commercial exercise in the sense that at this stage, if we were judging our capacity to recover our total investment, we could conceivably justify it. Everybody knows that.
What we have done as a nation—and whether it was right or wrong is an argument left far behind us in 1962 and I do not want to disinter it now—is to focus an enormous amount of effort, money and skill on producing something that is technically perfect and that we all know, on entry into service, will be in demand. But we also know, alas—it is sad but we now know it—that there have not been prospects of getting the orders early enough even to be confident of our production runs at this stage. Those orders have not been available.
I therefore say to the hon. Member, and I hope I have now made it clear, that at this moment we cannot judge the matter on a narrow accountancy cost-benefit basis. We have now to go forward and let the aircraft enter into service. It is the will of the Government that is really at issue, and by "at issue" I do not mean in doubt.

Mr. Dan Jones: Is it the assertion of my right hon. Friend that the commercial success of Concorde is now doomed?

Mr. Benn: It depends on how one defines commercial success. If I were asked candidly to give the House my judgment as to whether there was a prospect, through the sales of Concorde that we have produced, of getting back all the research and development money that we have put in, I think I would have to say that those prospects do not exist or are very slight. Indeed, I think that as a Minister I used to give a figure of one-third recovery and the position has altered since then.
There are two things to say about this. One is that we are no longer discussing a theoretical aircraft. One of the curious things about our debates on Concorde is that they all tend to be, in some shape


or form, a rehash of the 1962 debate. We are discussing a real aircraft made by real people with real skills, real pride and real determination, and it is there. Having devoted 10 years of effort to this aircraft, we now have to look at it from the point of view of the policies we adopt in the period between now and entry into service when the orders will come along.
In that connection I come back to what I said about the will of the Government. What will determine the attitude of the world's airlines towards Concorde above all else is their assessment of how serious we are about success.
I wish to offer the Minister—and he will not misunderstand me—my congratulations at the enormous vigour of the sales campaign in which he himself has participated since he took responsibility for this matter. I pay genuine tribute to him for his enthusiasm and to the Government for authorising what was a very deep personal, and hence governmental, commitment in the aircraft.
But if the Minister is to be successful in fighting such a battle for this aircraft—and not just for its continuation, because I hope, I believe and I am certain that that is beyond question, but for a production run adequate to meet the orders that will come after 1975—he has more deliberately to harness the support of the British people just as, if Pan American, Trans World and other American airlines are to buy it, the support of the American people as a whole has to be won.
To return to how I came in to this stage of the argument, I believe that the prospects of doing that are the greater if more information is made available and are the lesser if it is thought that somehow there is something to conceal and something that has to be protected from the public gaze, otherwise we reduce the sales prospects. I cannot do fairer than that.
I put to the Minister my view that he would be helped if he were able to be more candid. As a representative—we all are—of the taxpayers of this country, I believe that they are entitled to know, quite apart from the fact that I believe it would be advantageous for the aircraft for them to know the facts.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: Does not my right hon. Friend conceive it to be pos-

sible that the reason why the Minister is being rather secretive about the commercial prospects of Concorde is that if they were fully revealed they would scupper the project altogether?

Mr. Benn: That rumour, I think, is bound to be current while the Minister remains silent. I am trying to strengthen the Minister by eliciting more facts. His silence gives credence to the Putney view, and the Putney view does more damage to the sales of Concorde than the revelation of the fact that this aircraft is there and, let us be candid, is being subsidised by the Government. Any airline that buys Concorde is buying an aircraft subsidised at any rate as to research and development. Of course it is subsidised. The manufacturers are getting marvellous value for money because they are paying the selling price and getting £1,000 million of research and development towards which they will be making a very small contribution.
I go further and say to the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. BruceGardyne), who takes an interest in these matters, that it is not possible to look at this merely in terms of the aircraft itself. This is a new generation of aircraft. It is a generation of aircraft, supersonic in character, that has already arrived. The Russians have it and there is no doubt whatsoever that the Americans will have it. The Americans cannot be left out of the supersonic race or out of the fast end of the market.
This aircraft, by the historical accident of our having produced it, gives us a chance to implant all over the world Anglo-French airframe and aero-engine technology possibly 10 years ahead of the Americans. This indeed is one reason why the Americans want to be in the field because one cannot be the biggest aircraft manufacturer in the world and then say "We have nothing to offer you at the fast end; you must go to Bristol or Toulouse if you want fast aircraft. All we can offer you is the airbus, Piper Cub or anything in the middle".
The national investment in this aircraft is one for this country in a whole range of technology that we know for a fact will be a part of the aviation business in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s and the year 2000.
I beg my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins), who is a critic but a fair man, to recognise that even if he were by some astonishing chance able to realise his dreams and stop the Concorde, his Putney constituents would hear the TU144 rolling overhead and the Boeing 2707 rolling overhead and we would have done nothing but throw away what we have.

Mr. Dan Jones: The Russians will not throw it away.

Mr. Benn: Of course they are not likely to throw it away, because their view of economics is rather different. Everybody selects his economic criteria according to his political will. The American space programme was not costed. The Americans spent 90,000 million dollars on their space programme and never got a penny back. Nobody ever asked when they landed on the moon where the economic justification was, because there was none.
I believe we must, therefore, be a little readier when we reach this stage, and I am talking now about 1973 and not 1962, to look more widely at what we have built, what we are buying and what we would lose by cancelling and by pulling out at this stage.
If the argument is that when the Government enter into a commercial arrangement there has to be a shroud of secrecy surrounding the project, we are saying something very serious indeed. We are saying that if the British taxpayer invests in something, unlike an ordinary shareholder who has rights at a shareholders' meeting he must stand back and decline to ask questions because it would in some way weaken the success of the project.
When one thinks of the problems of Lockheed and the uncertainty that surrounded it at the time of the difficulties over the C500, or when one thinks of the Rolls-Royce difficulties and the anxiety surrounding the TriStar, or the difficulties surrounding many advanced American aircraft, even the Boeing 2707 or the European A300 airbus, it is evident to any customer airline that where the Government are involved there is bound, by definition, to be a non-commercial element. When there is a noncommercial element, how does one judge whether the aircraft or project will come

to the market place? One judges it by the will and determination of the Minister or the country that is subsidising it. That is how one tells.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman again but I wonder whether you would advise the House at this stage. It seems that the right hon. Gentleman is advancing a fairly broad argument on the new clause, and I am a little unclear about how we are to conduct the debate on the clause and in the subsequent Third Reading debate. I had it in mind that the broader arguments were perhaps more suitable for the Third Reading debate, but if those arguments should be advanced now it would help the House to be told that.

Mr. Speaker: This is a fairly wide clause, and I think that certain general arguments are admissible under it. At the same time, one has an idea of what would be more appropriate for a Third Reading speech. It is a matter which I must leave to the good sense of the House. I do not think that the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) has been out of order so far, but he has been going rather wide.

Mr. Benn: If I have offended the House, Mr. Speaker, I apologise. In many ways the same points could be made in a brief Third Reading speech, but it might be for the convenience of the House if the points were encapsulated into a single debate and the Third Reading taken in a different way. All my arguments have been addressed to the element of secrecy and to whether it would be of advantage both to the House and to the project for more information to be made available.

The Minister for Aerospace and Shipping (Mr. Michael Heseltine): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I believe that most of the arguments overlap considerably, and as I suspect that most hon. Members will want to cover various aspects of each of the problems in the various sub-divisions I think that it will be convenient to deal with as many as possible in one debate rather than divide the issues.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. Speaker: However that may be, perhaps the time has come to get the debate into order. The Second Reading


of the new clause has not been formally moved. The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East is not entitled to move it because his name is not on the Amendment Paper. If the hon. Member for Newark (Mr. Bishop) will move the new clause formally, we shall get into order in all respects.

Clause brought up, and read the First time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the clause be read a Second time.—[Mr. Bishop.]

Mr. Benn: I never thought that I should need to be blessed by a bishop before I could continue in the House. If I have been out of order so far, I apologise sincerely.

Mr. Robert Adley: Not the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

Mr. Benn: No.
If we are to take this more broadly, may I try to look at the problem of information in terms of the immediate situation confronting the Government about the authorisation of the production programme? It is clear that however many wise Members of the House and former Ministers anticipated the Pan-Am decision before it occurred—and I heard the right hon. and learned Member for Gloucestershire, South (Sir F. Corfield) saying on television that by studying Pan American balance sheets over the years he had prepared himself for this disappointment—the plain fact is that we have not obtained the firm orders which we would like to have acquired for our production programme between now and 1975.
The Government are therefore faced with a very important decision about the phasing of the production programme. I leave out of account any possibility—because it is clearly excluded by ministerial statements which I welcome—that at this stage the Government will change their view about the whole project. What are the options open to the Government? There are two. My first is to cut back the production programme in line with the orders that have emerged from the options and produce at a less rapid rate than would otherwise have been the case. The other is to follow the advice of Kaiser Wilhelm when he sacked Bismarck and go "full steam ahead".
There is a range of options between the two. The Government's decision is very important not only for the aircraft workers, who are adequately represented by many Members in the House this evening, but also from the point of view of the success of the project because if, as I believe it will be, the Concorde is ordered when it enters into service, we must be sure that the aircraft is there to meet those orders.
We have had experience of the VCIO where, years after the production line was closed, it may be opened again to meet the Chinese demand for the aircraft. I remember fighting a partially successful and partially unsuccessful battle to prevent the VC10 production line from being closed when I was the responsible Minister. When one looks at other aircraft, it becomes clear that were we to have the Hunter or the Spitfire still on offer there would still be a demand for them. The success of an aircraft industry policy depends at least as much, if not more, on developing and maintaining the aircraft that one has, rather than always thinking in terms of the next project. We have something to learn from Volkswagen when it comes to aircraft.
This is an important question because if the production line were cut back and after the aircraft entered into service orders came in and Concordes were not there to meet them we should have made the most foolish decision of all. On Monday I asked the Minister whether he had agreed with the French what the production programme should be, and he replied that he had not. Whether that was because he had not discussed it with them, or because there was some disagreement, I shall not probe, but here is where the anxiety of the aircraft workers comes into the picture.
I hope that without spreading any alarm or despondency I may convey to the Minister the anxieties of workers in the aircraft industry, particularly those at Bristol and Weybridge. The fear is that, whereas the French Government manifestly intend to go ahead with the full rate of production regardless of the nonappearance of the Pan-Am and other orders, the British Government may cut back their production programme in line with the orders that are there.
Were that to happen, what would follow? It would follow that the Toulouse assembly line would be going flat out and the Bristol assembly line might be held back. The fear that has been expressed—and as one of the Members who have reason to be interested I must put it to the House—is that if that were to happen the argument for a single assembly line at Toulouse might become more powerful. A single assembly line there after all the effort at Bristol would be a terrible thing to contemplate because, having invested money in the aircraft, one would find that Bristol had again produced a prototype like the Brabazon, which is seared in everybody's memory, and production was being done in France.
Why should suspicion arise in the minds of the workers at Bristol? They arise for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is known that the Government are contemplating public expenditure economies.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Hear, hear.

Mr. Benn: I knew that the hon. Gentleman would cheer that. To cut back production in line with orders may seem a sensible short-term economy.
Secondly, anxiety arises because the hon. Gentleman has made vague speeches about a European aircraft industry. Indeed, if I do not misunderstand him, he has given vent at some stage to the view that maybe in the rationalisation there might have to be some rundown in manpower. With public expenditure economy combined with the fear that the Minister has some dream in mind of a European airframe and aero-engine industry, the anxieties in Bristol begin to grow. I have not had the privilege of seeing the Marshall Report on the future of the industry but I think I can guess what will be in it, a policy to bring about mergers in the airframe industry based on the new passion for having everything European.
I come back to the question of secrecy. The Marshall Report has not been published. Maybe criticisms of this or that firm might have to be excised. All I know is that civil servants would be opposed on general grounds to publishing the report. Here is a piece of secrecy which is feeding absolutely legitimate

anxieties in the breast of people building the aircraft who passionately believe that they should be given the same production line as the French.

Mr. Michael Heseltine: I think I could clarify for the right hon. Gentleman a point which has often been dealt with by me in the House—why the Marshall Report has not been published. It was not published because it is a report by civil servants in the Department of Trade and Industry commissioned within the Department of Trade and Industry, and constitutionally it would be quite unthinkable that civil servants could have their views published and Ministers find themselves in a position of having to accept or reject the views of their departmental officials.

Mr. Benn: I do not accept that argument for an instant. It is a new argument, and yet civil servants appear before Select Committees and are examined by hon. Members, and their views may differ from a Minister's view. When I was a Minister they would say "What happens if we differ from you on policy?" I said that they should give their view, but I have to make the decision. Anyone with any knowledge of Whitehall knows that sometimes there are fierce arguments between Permanent Secretaries and Ministers. Why should Parliament not be brought into those discussions, particularly if the argument bears on the future of a major project?
That is a different argument from the one about not giving information about the tracked hovertrain. The Minister cancelled that project without telling anyone and without giving the Select Committee a chance to discuss it. That is a different argument from the one about not giving information relating to the Concorde. When one examines the arguments about secrecy one finds they are all different and are tailormade to offer specific reasons, but in every case they emerge from a genuine and continued reluctance by Whitehall to disclose its thinking so that it can be criticised for ministerial decisions.

Mr. Heseltine: This is a wide issue, but, to put the record straight, I think the matter was before the Select Committee on three occasions and I always revealed to it my complete thinking. In


the case of the hovertrain the Select Committee did not ask for information and did not decide to set up an inquiry until the Government had taken the decision to close the project down, but the Committee could have asked for information.

Mr. Benn: It is quite out of order to go into the question of the hovertrain. We shall come back to it on another occasion. It is a highly important issue. I did not know until the Minister made the announcement yesterday that the tracked hovertrain had been cancelled.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman said a few moments ago that he would be out of order if he pursued this subject. He must abide by his own ruling.

Mr. Adley: May we go back to the question of the Concorde? The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) made the point a few minutes ago, and then passed on, about fears of aircraft workers in Bristol. I hope that he will not endeavour to imply that anything which has been said by my hon. Friend the Minister will leave his constituents and mine with the view that the Government may be wavering. I was a little surprised that the right hon. Gentleman did not mention that Sir George Edwards, in response to a question at a Press conference, was the only person who had mentioned closing one or other production lines. This did not emanate from the Government. I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to continue on this line because he may be in danger of causing the very distress that he is seeking to avoid.

Mr. Benn: I am afraid that that simply will not wash. Neither the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Adley) nor I would be doing our duty in the House if we failed to reflect anxieties in our constituencies, to bring them into the open and to seek from the Government a clear decision.
I said that the options open were a full production line or a modified limited production line, and that if the British Government have a different view from that of the French Government there might he a case for a single assembly line becoming powerful against the Minister's known desire for the British airframe industry. The hon. Member must not

accuse me of inflaming anxieties. I have listened to the arguments and tried to give accurate information to the workers in Bristol and elsewhere who have asked me about this, but there is a genuine uncertainty on whether the Government adopt the same view as the French Government about full production and entry into service.
I must not overrule your Rulings, Mr. Speaker, nor mine, and I want to bring my speech to a conclusion. The Opposition support this Bill. I make that absolutely clear so that there may be no doubt about it. We support the Bill and support the production finance for this aircraft. We have carried forward in our support the same legislation as it was my privilege to introduce—the Industrial Expansion Act—which first provided for industrial finance. Coupled with that, we believe that more information should be made available on the grounds of public interest and parliamentary accountability, and because that is the best way to indicate the will of the Government that production of this aircraft should continue. The various arguments are contained in the amendments and new clause, which I commend to the House.
I want there to be no doubt—I speak as Opposition spokesman with the full support of my colleagues—that by the passage of this Bill the aircraft will get the support which it needs and enter into service and in time, in many ways not as yet clear to all of us, will reflect great credit on the country which has put so much skill, so much workmanship and so much vision into its manufacture.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I have listened with considerable interest to the comments made by the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). I was hoping that he would explain the implications of the new clause, but I do not think he did. It would be very interesting to know, since the clause calls for the establishment of a Select Committee as and when the expenditure authorised under the Bill exceeds £300 million, when the Opposition think that that figure will be exceeded. I should have thought that to be of some relevance to the clause but it was not a matter which entered into the right hon. Gentleman's speech.
The new clause seems to me to be fairly nugatory. I do not know how long my hon. Friend the Minister expects the first £300 million to last. I hope that it will not be a matter only of months, for various reasons which I shall come to. In this context, it is relevant to bear in mind that the Public Accounts Committee will, I understand, be analysing this great venture later this year, so that the new clause would presumably be left far behind by the considerations of the PAC.
6.30 p.m.
On only one thing in the right hon. Gentleman's speech did I find myself in complete agreement. This was in his reference to the possibility of the assembly line for Concorde being concentrated at Toulouse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Adley) said, the only person who has made this suggestion is Sir George Edwards at his Press conference, and I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is very hard to accept Sir George's proposition, as reported in the Press, that we must demonstrate our absence of chauvinism in this project, if need be, by accepting that the concentration of airframe production, if concentration is needed, shall take place on the French side.
Internationalism with other people's money is a relatively painless virtue. I represent a development area on the east coast of Scotland, and if I had substantial reservations about the rectitude of expecting the taxpayers I represent to provide about £100 million a year for the growth and maintenance of unemployment in areas like Bristol and Weybridge, which are not in all conscience the most depressed areas of the United Kingdom, those doubts and reservations would be as nothing to the proposition that they should be expected to finance the provision of employment to this tune of money in Toulouse. To that extent I go along with the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Adley: With respect, I think that my hon. Friend must be a little more specific with the figures. He refers to £100 million. We are talking of expenditure by the British taxpayer so far of under £400 million spread over 10 years at 1972 prices.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Taking the figures over the two countries, I do not think my hon. Friend would dissent from the proposition that there has been a certain acceleration in the escalation of costs.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: Perhaps it would be more convenient if the hon. Gentleman were to use the figure, put by the Prime Minister, of £1½million a week, which is fairly easy to grasp.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I do not think one can totally dissent from that proposition. However, as I have said, this was the one point on which I found myself in complete agreement with the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East. With the other aspects of his argument I was in considerable perplexity. He seemed to be indulging, not for the first time, in supersonic cove-ism. He seemed to be saying that all that was needed to sell the aircraft throughout the length and breadth of the world was the determination of the Government.
Like my right hon. and hon. Friends, I have immensely admired the determination, enthusiasm and flair which my hon. Friend the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping has put into his responsibilities for furthering the sales programme of this aircraft, but I cannot for one moment really accept that all that is required to persuade the airlines of the world to buy it as a commercial prospect is that the right hon. Gentleman or my right hon. and hon. Friends should show determination and conviction in its success. The truth, as surely the right hon. Gentleman, who I know has a rather romantic view of technology, might be prepared to accept, is that the willingness of every other airline in the world apart from Air France and BOAC to purchase this aircraft must depend fundamentally on their assessment of Concorde's commercial prospects.

Mr. Dan Jones: The hon. Gentleman should make himself aware that Pan-Am's original assessment was favourable and that eventually, when it decided otherwise, its decision coincided with the economic debacle of the United States. I wish that the hon. Gentleman would try to relate that factor to the figures.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I would not dream of overlooking that factor, but I think that the simple proposition I have put—that the decision of any individual airline to purchase this aircraft or not to purchase it will depend on its commercial assessment of Concorde's prospects and not on the determination by this or any other Government, British or French—is really hard in all sincerity for hon. Members to dispute.

Mr. Benn: Far from taking a romantic view of Concorde, I have said on many occasions—even during the last election campaign two days before polling day outside the factory—that Concorde's future will be determined in the market place. I was addressing myself today to the difficult two-year period between the cancellation of the Pan-Am order and entry into service, in which I believe that the determination of the Government to proceed will be the thing that will maintain the aircraft's availablility for airlines which will look at it later.
Concorde's early design stage began in 1955 and the aircraft will remain in service perhaps until the 1990s. To allow it to be cancelled because of the short-term economic difficulties of one or two airlines at present would be to misjudge the nature of this enormous enterprise. To say so is not to take a mystical view, but quite the reverse. It will in the end succeed or fail on the commercial calculations of the airlines.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Perhaps mysticism is sometimes in the ear of the listener. Tonight, not for the first time, I found some of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks somewhat mystical. However, I do not want to press the argument on this point beyond what I have said. But I do not think we are any longer in dispute. The right hon. Gentleman has agreed that the decision on the project and purchase will depend on the commercial calculations of the potential purchasers among the airlines.
The right hon. Gentleman's proposition on determination led him today and earlier this week into putting to my hon. Friend the Minister for Aerospace a proposition which I find somewhat alarming. It was most clearly put last Monday when the right hon. Gentleman asked my hon. Friend whether he could

assure the House that he has reached full agreement with the French Government on the phasing of production orders beyond those which have already been authorised?
I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend say in reply:
No. I have not reached agreement because I have not sought agreement. We obviously have to deal with production orders in the light of sales circumstances at the time, and one cannot deal with this in advance of events."—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 12th February 1973; Vol. 850, c. 968.]
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend in that. It is one of the few comments I have heard in recent weeks which has somewhat strengthened my confidence in the wisdom of this House in giving the Bill its Third Reading.
The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East quoted the example of the Volkswagen. I remind him that we are not now talking about a model which costs £500, £600 or £700 apiece. We are talking about an aircraft costing tens of millions of £s apiece. For the House to ask the long-suffering British taxpayer to accept the stockpiling of this aircraft in the hope that orders will subsequently materialise would be absolutely intolerable. Therefore it was a considerable reassurance to me to hear the answer of my hon. Friend on Monday, and I hope that he will elaborate upon that answer when he replies to the debate.
Certain events have occurred since the Bill was given a Second Reading before Christmas which we cannot entirely ignore before we allow its passage to be concluded. As my hon. Friend indicated that it might be more convenient if we dealt with the broader aspects in this debate, I propose to say something about this now.
I said that various events had supervened. There are two. I do not know whether the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East is oblivious to the first of these events. He said something which made me suspect that he was. He referred to the absolute determination of the French Government. I have news for the right hon. Gentleman. The French nation is currently engaged in a general election. The opinion polls suggest that the outcome of that general election may be to enable the centre party to hold the balance of power in the next French Assembly. I freely admit that opinion polls are often wrong, as we


all know from our experience. Nevertheless, that is what the opinion polls say. One of the two leaders of the centre party, M. Servan-Schreiber, has already announced that it will be a precondition for his party on the formation of a Government in which it is a partner that the Concorde project should not be proceeded with. We cannot pretend that that statement has not been made. It is on the record. Therefore, we must not make the assumptions about the attitude of the French Government today that we were justified in making on Second Reading of the Bill.

Mr. Maurice Edelman: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the French Communist Party and Socialist Party are both firmly in favour of the continuation of Concorde? Even if M. Servan-Schreiber, as an isolated vote, were to put forward this precondition, it would be rejected by those parties, as L'Humanité has already stated, because they are firmly committed to the continuation of Concorde.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: The answer is that M. Servan-Schreiber does not have an isolated vote. He was speaking not on his own behalf but on behalf of his group.
Again for what it is worth, opinion polls suggest that the centre party will be in a position to choose its own partner and that neither of the other two groups will be able to form a new Government without it. In those circumstances, bargaining power is not to be entirely neglected.
I repeat that assumptions one could make in absolute confidence about the attitude of the French Government towards the prosecution of this project when the Bill was before us on Second Reading are no longer as entirely valid or as entirely unquestionable as they were then.
However, the more anxious development for many of us has been the decision of Pan-American, TWA and Sabena to cancel their options. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will shed a little further light on the state of the options. I have carefully studied the answers that he and his colleague have given to Questions in the House on this matter and I do not find them easy to reconcile one with another.
The progress of events is fairly clear. We started with 74 options placed prior to the pricing formula with 16 airlines. On October 26th as reported at c. 439, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State announced that the 74 had come down to 54. On 30th November we were down to 48 including, among others, two for Sabena. We were not told whether the three outstanding options for BOAC and the four for Air France were still in existence. There has been no clear explanation of the position of these two options and I hope my hon. Friend will deal with this.

Mr. Michael Heseltine: In Committee I undertook—and I subsequently implemented the undertaking—to publish a full list of options existing. I did that recently for my lion. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen), and the list did not include the options for BOAC and Air France to which my hon. Friend refers.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Will my hon. Friend make it clear to the House? Are we to understand that these options have lapsed?

Mr. Heseltine: They are not included in the current list of options. Those options are in relation to aircraft which should be considered way down the production line, and it would be misleading to include them in the list of options on which there are current negotiations.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: In other words, I take it that for all practical purposes they have lapsed. It is helpful to the House to get that clear. Much the same situation occurred with Sabena. In the list given on 30th November Sabena was down for two options. In the list given on 1st February, in c. 468, Sabena had dropped out. Yesterday we were told that Sabena had cancelled.
To complete the series, by 1st February we were down to 33 options, and in the light—

Mr. Dan Jones: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne), who complained about my hon. Friend making a Third Reading speech, is himself making a Third Reading speech. Should not his attention be directed to the new clause?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am glad to have the opportunity of saying this. There may be one or two right hon. and hon. Gentlemen here now who were not present when this matter was raised. It was agreed that the debate on new Clause 1 should go very wide on the understanding that that would restrict the time spent on Third Reading.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I am most grateful, Mr. Speaker. I had not intended to make this speech at this point, but in the light of the Ruling which you gave it seemed the right time for it.

Mr. Adley: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I will give way later, but I want to complete the successive phases of our knowledge about the options. Prior to the pricing formula there were 74. On 26th October there were 54. On 30th November there were 48 plus seven—no doubt the BOAC and Air France options. On 1st February there were 33-plus, and we now know that the two Sabena options were in doubt. Now the figure is 27, in addition to which we have the preliminary purchase agreement with China for three and the letter of intent of Iran Air for two. Those have not changed from one day to the next.

Mr. Adley: My hon. Friend appears to make a god of the options. Will he explain, in the totality of the context of this project, the importance he sees in an option given 10 years ago in totally different circumstances for a place in a queue?

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I assure my hon. Friend that I no more dream of making a god of options than I do of making a god of Concorde. All I am saying is that certain disparities have arisen as we have advanced which should be illuminated before the House says farewell to the Bill. At least we have now established that to all intents and purposes the three options of BOAC and the four options of Air France have lapsed. This is at least helpful information for us to have.
This to my mind leads us to recognise—and I hope that my hon. Friend when he replies to this debate will recognise—that we are in a sense in a somewhat different ball game, to put it no higher,

from what we were in when we discussed that Bill on Second Reading. The right hon. Gentleman argued tonight as I have heard many of my right hon. and hon. Friends from the Bristol area argue on numerous occasions, that once Air France and British Airways had put Concorde into service, once it was flying the colours of Air France and British Airways, the other major American airlines and others would be obliged to buy it and, therefore, we should not be too concerned about what was happening over the options. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman must agree that this must be a matter of judgment. He knows a very great deal more about it than I do and I would hesitate to question his judgment.
The right hon. Gentleman is entirely satisfied that the mere sight of a handful of Concordes being flown by Air France and British Airways across the Atlantic would be sufficient to bring in all the other airlines which, as he knows, have very substantial problems at the present time and will continue to have very substantial problems in financing the aircraft they have already purchased during the period up to 1975. All one can say at this point is that one must devoutly hope and pray that the right hon. Gentleman's confidence will be fully justified.
I return to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Minister on Monday. It is a little much to expect the long-suffering taxpayers of this country to accept that Concorde should be stockpiled on the conviction, at this stage, that the right hon. Gentleman's confidence in this matter is totally justified. Since the matter of employment created by the Concorde project has been raised by the right hon. Gentleman today and by numerous of my hon. Friends on other occasions, it is worth recalling an answer I obtained the other day from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. After all, issues of employment and jobs are traditionally clothed in a regional garb.
The answer I obtained from my hon. Friend was that 4 per cent. of the labour force is to be found in development areas, 1 per cent. being in special development areas; 96 per cent. of the labour force of Concorde is to be found outwith the development areas. So I do not believe that the employment argument as such is one that should be over-emphasised in our discussion.

Mr. Arthur Palmer: I have some difficulty in following the hon. Gentleman's argument. How does he think that employment in Scotland will be assisted by creating unemployment in Bristol?

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I would not have dreamed of advancing such a proposition. All I was saying was that my constituents and those of other hon. Members are asked to accept the responsibility for this very substantial expenditure, and we are tonight discussing a Bill which provides for up to an additional £350 million of expenditure on various grounds, some of which may be very good and sound and some of which arouse doubts in some of our minds; and one of those arguments advanced this evening by the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East, not for the first time, is the argument of employment. I was saying that the argument of employment was normally considered in this House, in recent years at any rate, on a regional basis. I was merely pointing out that on a regional basis, from the point of view of the consideration of regional development policy, I do not believe Concorde as such should be regarded as particularly relevant to that specific problem.
I do not wish to prolong my remarks further. I simply conclude on one point mentioned in the past by the right hon. Gentleman, the question of public expenditure. While I was delighted by the answer my hon. Friend gave to the right hon. Gentleman on Monday, I was a little concerned by an answer he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen). My hon. Friend had pointed out to the Minister
that there are some hon. Members who are not so naive as to suppose that they can talk about the undesirable aggregate levels of public expenditure without drawing attention to certain components of public expenditure which have highly questionable economic and social implications".
My hon. Friend said in reply:
I do not think that my hon. Friend will dissent from the view that the responsibilities I have are those for giving every support possible to the Concorde programme. Obviously in any dialogue about public expenditure it is a matter for hon. Members to raise such matters as they wish."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st February 1973; Vol. 849, c. 1615.]
I hope that my hon. Friend will not for one moment imagine, and I am sure

he would not, that ministerial responsibilities can be departmentalised between those whose duties are to spend the public money and those whose duties are to try to save it. We are all together in this business of public expenditure, backbenchers and Front Benchers alike. As my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury pointed out to us the other day, we are all too often schizophrenic in these matters and cannot at the same time insist that the course of public expenditure is growing too fast and that the total take of the public sector from the nation's resources is growing dangerously and threatening the whole inflationary balance of the economy and then avert our faces from massive expenditure on projects such as this. I submit that this is a proposition which must be in the minds not only of back-benchers but also of Front Benchers on a night like this when we are discussing this Bill.

Mr. J. Grimond: Like the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne), I can see certain objections to the particular drafting of the proposed clause. Nevertheless I rise to support it.
I am one of those who believe that the Concorde project was a major national mistake. I believe that the aircraft industry, and, indeed, air travel, has been bedevilled by false motives and particularly the motive of national prestige; and this is one of the most obvious examples of it. Nor have I been much impressed by the arguments for it today. I see no reason why we should be at the fast end of air travel. There are much more socially desirable things than being at the fast end. Nor do I think that Russia and the Kaiser are good examples to follow. I long not to go to the moon. I regard Concorde as being a relic of the time when we worshipped technology of any kind, the more expensive the better, the bigger the more desirable. I do not share that view.
7.0 p.m.
One of my fundamental objections to Concorde is that, even if successful, it will be a success which only the rich of the world will enjoy. It will be a success for the expense-account traveller and the person who does not have to pay. It will make no contribution to the wellbeing of the poor of the world.
I am suspicious of the arguments which divorce the technical from the commercial side of the project and which give the impression that we should spend a great deal of money on a marvellous technical toy. I know that this is putting the matter crudely but we have the right to examine the spending of these large sums of public money. I regard public money as being first earmarked for morally desirable ends, and I do not believe that Concorde falls into that category.
There is no doubt that this type of expenditure has added to the inflationary situation in which we now find ourselves, and has built up powerful vested interests in places such as Bristol. I accept that this is bound to happen, and no doubt I should be more inclined to argue for this project if the aircraft were being made in Orkney and Shetland. When one starts out on this sort of project, one encourages people to set up home in the area and to expect continuing employment there, and it is very hard if eventually the project has to be run down. However, I hope that there will be other more useful types of technology on which those who are now engaged on this project could be employed. We spend far too little time on research and development on intermediate technology which would be of some use to the majority of people in the world.
My first reason for supporting the clause is that the whole project was misconceived, and I believe it right that Parliament should inquire into its history. Even if one takes the view that it was rightly conceived, nobody can defend the estimating on the project. Parliament should look at its procedures to examine why the estimates were so widely adrift. I share the view that nearly all the arguments about secrecy are bogus, developed ad hoc because Whitehall naturally does not want to give information or to be cross-examined.

Mr. Neil Marten: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall the debate in December 1962 in this House on the subject, and may I make one quotation from a speech by a Minister on that occasion? It was as follows:
The estimated total development cost is £150 million to £170 million, to be divided between the two countries. In our estimating we have tried to be completely realistic …We have provided …for unforeseen problems and the consequent tendency for initial cost

estimates to be exceeded…Some of the wilder estimates …may be dismissed out of hand."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st December 1962; Vol. 669, c. 1652–3.]
I was the Minister who made that speech, and I should like to apologise.

Mr. Grimond: On behalf of the whole House, I should like to thank the hon. Gentleman for making that announcement. It is a powerful argument on the subject of wrong estimating, and it proves that there is no justification for secrecy.
The House does not spend enough time considering alternatives. One day we debate Concorde, the next day we debate something else, and we seldom consider projects together. We should do so. If we are to do our job properly, we must have expert advice on a much higher level. I suspect that what happened over the hovertrain was that the Select Committee had no idea of Whitehall's thinking on this subject, because it was obvious that the news was just sprung on the Committee. When one serves on a Select Committee it is difficult to know how the Whitehall mind is working or moving, and often hon. Members are overtaken by events. Therefore, if this type of clause were passed it would give us an opportunity to look into this history of the project, to equip ourselves with more and better information and more efficient methods of controlling public expenditure, and to seek to arrive at better estimates.
In terms of the future I appreciate that, having made these aircraft, the Government must sell them if they possibly can, but I am a little nervous about this determination to sell. Does it mean that the aircraft should be sold at any price? I have a feeling that we shall soon be subsidising the buyers. I have even heard it suggested that we should give a subsidy to the American airlines to get them to buy the aircraft. This is the economics of Alice in Wonderland. For a country like ours, I find it alarming that such a course should even be thought of. Therefore, the House should be in a position to make its views known on this sort of situation.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: Does the right hon. Gentleman also appreciate that if the aircraft goes into service with BOAC and Air France, not only will the buyers be subsidised but passengers too?

Mr. Grimond: Yes, and they will not be the poorest in the country; they will be the richest people in the country who will be subsidised by the general taxpayer, including many people who are poor. It will be for the purpose of enabling wealthy people to cross the Atlantic as a prestige operation faster than they can do now. The House should examine very carefully the question of subsidising airlines or passengers so that airline companies can buy an aircraft which is commercially non-viable.
The clause would give us an opportunity to take a further step towards our being able to cross-examine the Civil Service. The day has long passed when we can pretend that the Civil Service speaks only through the mouths of Ministers and is a neutral body which must be kept out of the public gaze. Civil servants regularly appear before House of Commons Committees, and they do an extremely useful job. It is a difficult job, but it is one which must be done in a modern democracy. I hope that this type of provision will mean that we shall have greater access to the real power in Whitehall and that we shall have time to act so that we know the sort of considerations that are operating in Whitehall.
Therefore, although I do not necessarily endorse the exact wording of the clause, I believe that the House should examine how this situation arose, that we should learn the lessons of the past, and that we should properly equip ourselves in future to deal with these very difficult technical decisions.

Sir F. Corfield: I am glad my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) managed to clarify the emphasis of the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) on the Government's determination to continue their campaign for the sale of Concorde. In the interim until more orders are picked up, the Government's determination is a prerequisite. But we cannot emphasise too often, particularly in those areas where the aircraft is made and when the livelihood of so many people depends upon it, that the project will only succeed in the long term if the aircraft sells.
Whatever the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East says, this is a com-

mercial transaction looked at from the point of view of the customer airline. The argument that because a very great deal of Government money is involved it ceases to be commercial is the most extraordinary argument I have ever heard from anywhere, let alone from the Opposition Front Bench.
If we determine to go ahead to provide BOAC and Air France with the aircraft which they have ordered and to allow for the intentions expressed by the Iranians and Chinese, making a total at the moment of some 12 aircraft, it is in my view wholly impracticable to consider a production run on the basis of stopping at the present target of 16 aircraft in Bristol, eight on each production line. I take it that if we go on—and we have been assured that the Government will go on, and I wholly agree with that decision—there can be no question of stopping production at the present 16 aircraft, or even the next six for which advance materials are being ordered.
Having said that, I think it is extremely misleading of the right hon. Gentleman to talk in terms of the Government's carrying on with full production. What on earth does "full production" mean in this context? I have no doubt that if we had a very long order book it would be perfectly possible to produce at each plant two aircraft a month—that is, 24 at each, 48 in the year. Does anybody really think that it would make sense to go ahead now with production at that sort of rate when the order book is as it is and to expect my hon. Friend to get up in this House when perhaps 20 of these aircraft have been built, at £13 million apiece at 1971 prices and about £20 million apiece with spares and so on and not be absolutely pulled to pieces by the people who are today advocating that that is what he should do? Of course he would be pulled to pieces. It would be outrageous for any Government to go ahead on this programme at any stage without making it clear that they are free to review, and indeed must review, the production schedule from time to time.
It is wholly unfair to the workers in my constituency whose anxieties of course I appreciate—these two factories are in my constituency, not in the right hon. Gentleman's—to say to them that they can expect production at the sort of rate that


is meant when we talk about full production. Of course they cannot, and it is thoroughly unfair to suggest that they can and quite wrong to hold out the hope that any Government in the present circumstances would be in any sense responsible if they did not review the production from time to time—as indeed it has been reviewed over and over again in the past. It was reviewed when I was responsible; it was reviewed when the right hon. Gentleman was responsible; and I have no doubt that this is not the only review that my hon. Friend will be looking at. It is thoroughly misleading and, to put it mildly, thoroughly unkind to put forward the sort of proposition that the right hon. Gentleman has put forward.
I believe that at this stage it is much too early to take a decision to limit production below the rate at which we are going at the moment. I think it quite unreasonable to expect my hon. Friend at this stage to have had discussions with the French—as will be necessary—on which any final decision could be made. On the basis of review, and constant review, it would indeed be wrong to use the word "final" in that context.
But do not let there be any illusion about its being a disadvantage to have two lines of production. One has two learning curves, and one has lost a great deal of flexibility because there is a minimum rate of production below which one's costs per item go up very considerably indeed. So there is a disadvantage. Of course, I am not advocating for one moment that there should be only one. Certainly, if that turned out to be the sensible answer in the, I hope, fairly distant future, I would join wholeheartedly with other hon. Members here to ensure as far as we could that that line was in this country.
But I am bound to say that I would rather have one line than none because, when all is said and done, even one line, wherever it is, puts together the parts made more or less equally in both countries. Even that represents a great deal of work which we should be in danger of losing if there were any suggestion that we should try to stick to a particular rate of production, let alone that that should be supported by industrial action, which could only kill the project.
With regard to secrecy, I really think that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen should be more specific on the points on which they think the Government are not giving them the information they ought to have. The right hon. Gentleman has admitted that technically this is a first-class, indeed an astonishingly well-tested, aircraft, and he has not suggested for one moment that its technical qualities are not made fully known to prospective purchasers, to the House, or to anybody else. So I can only conclude that he is concentrating on the only two heads of information, on which I have any recollection that there has been criticism about lack of frankness—namely, the make-up of the costs, on the one hand, and the factors that go to deciding the rate of production at any given time, on the other.
If it is true that those who are pressing for greater frankness and less secrecy want a breakdown of the prices, do they really imagine that when that is available there are not going to be arguments about whether this tranche of the cost might not be cut in order to make the thing more attractive to the purchaser or increased in order to get more money back for the Government? Is it not abundantly clear that those arguments, taking place in public, as they are bound to do, in this House, will affect the potential purchasers' assessment, and be to the detriment of the project rather than the reverse? It is the same with the factors which are taken into account when considering the production programme. The principal factor there must be market assessment; if there is a discussion in public as to which airlines we think we can put the greatest reliance on to purchase this aircraft, we are inviting those airlines to play harder and harder to get.

Mr. Edelman: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is putting a very interesting argument. He is arguing in a sense in favour of secrecy. He has argued that hon. Members of this House cannot invite the Minister to give them information because in this case he might breach commercial trust. Equally, if one approached the company, it might argue that it might breach its confidentiality in relation to Whitehall. Is not the converse also true, that unless one knows exactly what are the factors which cause


the escalation in cost there is no possible means of arresting it before the next stage in the escalation is reached?

Sir F. Corfield: I very much doubt whether even the most powerful Select Committee of this House would have the competence to do exactly that. I can only say that I have the pleasure of the acquaintance of extremely clever people in this field and they have been remarkably unsuccessful, but I do not believe that they have been any less devoted to the concept of economy than people in this House.

Mr. Michael Heseltine: I am sure my right hon. and learned Friend will also remember that the Public Accounts Committee has examined this project on five successive occasions and is about to do so again.

Sir F. Corfield: Yes indeed, but I believe that we in this House are in danger of forgetting that under our constitution there is a distinction between the executive and the legislature, and hon. Members are members of the latter. For the right hon. Gentleman to draw a parallel, as he did, with a company in the private sector and say that we are not being allowed the information that the directors get is to make a wholly false comparison. We are not directors. What the company does not do is discuss the break-down of the price of a particular item, whether a Volkswagen or anything else, in public session in the annual general meeting, inviting the shareholders to go into details. We are representative of the shareholders here, not the directors, if that parallel, which in many ways is a false one, must be drawn. It is members of the Government who are in this context analogous to directors—not back bench Members of Parliament.
I am saying on behalf of those of us who have had to try to negotiate these matters that there are certain aspects concerning which one has to use one's judgment as to how much of the breakdown behind the figure one makes known to the other negotiating parties. That, I would have thought, was the common experience of anyone who has ever sold even a sweetdrop.

Mr. E. S. Bishop: The right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to the Sixth Report from the Public

Accounts Committee. I refer to the Sixth Report from the Expenditure Committee, paragraph 86 of which says:
In his evidence Sir Robert Marshall was unable to quote a parallel in any other field where national security was not at stake and where Parliament had been denied such information.
This is a relevant point. Surely the right hon. and learned Gentleman is aware that a Select Committee for which we ask could go into secret session to allow certain information to be given. The fact that we would then have a group of people in the House who were on the same wavelength on such matters must benefit the House and the country.

Sir F. Corfield: The hon. Gentleman seems to be raising the question of defence interests being the only valid excuse for withholding information on his first point. He forgets that this is the first commercial project—I use the word deliberately—designed to sell aeroplanes to ordinary commercial operators wholly financed by Government money. This puts the Government in the driving seat during the selling negotiations. It would be wrong if my hon. Friend, with his responsibilities to the taxpayer, were not in the driving seat. This puts him in an entirely different position. It is certainly different from the situation which has existed in the past even when the Government have backed, with a proportion of the costs in the form of launching aid, an aero-engine project or computer or whatever it may be.
As for the point about the Select Committee in camera, I am not sure where that takes us. As I understand it, the object is that the House as a whole should know. If a few hon. Members who are interested in some particular subject get together and obtain information which others do not have, information which they would be bound to keep secret, I do not believe that that would fulfil the objective of the exercise as visualised by the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East. Even if it did, I am bound to say, with all due respect to my colleagues, that I do not know of anything leakier than a Select Committee. It is hard enough in Government to keep these matters as close to one's chest as one would like. I cast my mind back to the occasion about three days after we had agreed with the French not to publish the price for the moment. Out it came from General


Zeigler. We have quite enough to compete with by way of leaks without increasing the possibilities.
I beg hon. Members to realise that if they want this thing to succeed, Ministers—my hon. Friend in particular—must have discretion about what they make public, certainly under those two headings which I have mentioned. I do not believe that my hon. Friend—certainly it was never my intention when I had responsibility—has refused any information which he did not honestly believe, if given, would have a disadvantageous effect on the negotiations which all of us—including those who are not at all happy about the Concorde programme, such as my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus—wish to succeed. We want to sell this aircraft if we can. To do something which will make that less likely is irresponsible. It is wrong to dress it up as some constitutional right. That is a misunderstanding of our traditional division between the executive and the legislature.

Mr. Brynmor John: The right hon. and learned Member for Gloucestershire, South (Sir F. Corfield) drew a false analogy between the executive and the legislature. When he talks about the history of Parliament and the constitution does he remember precisely where the House of Commons exerted its authority over the executive? It was to do with the expenditure of money, during the "Caroline period". If it had followed his argument this House would never have attained the degree of control which it possesses. It would have said "No, it is not for us to do this; we are only a legislature to pass laws."
When the expenditure of public money on behalf of a nation is involved the chief responsibility of a Minister is accountability to the elected representatives. If, as the Sixth Report from the Expenditure Committee makes clear beyond peradventure, there is disquiet among those who have sought information, it is wholly to the good that amendments such as this should be moved.
The right hon. and learned Member might stop to ask himself why it is, when this is such a splendid technical achievement, to which we all accede, that this has been such a sober and mournful debate. The only air of jauntiness was exhibited by the hon. Member for Ban-

bury (Mr. Marten) when he indulged in his breast-beating about the 1962 forecast. Otherwise it has been a sober debate. I do not think that is because the options are falling like autumn leaves and the Minister's air of confidence is becoming more and more forced every week.
I do not think it is simply because we are faced in this Bill, as we have been faced throughout the history of this project, with more and more expenditure. The sum of £300 million to £350 million is now being sanctioned by the House. I do not think it is primarily because of that, although I am bound to say that the way in which costs have escalated from the figure of £165 million—£170 million up to the £1,000 million plus has been a depressing experience.
It has been an experience which does not, with deference to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, make out a good case for the immaculate judgment or ability of Ministers. Perhaps there is a virtue in a robust back-bench examination of people, in public, exerting this kind of control. The right hon. and learned Gentleman seems to forget that it is public money which is at risk. Since the expenditure of all public money is carried out upon a system of priorities, what is devoted to this scheme is devoted at the expense of other schemes. Therefore, Parliament must be in a position to judge the comparative worth of each scheme.

Sir F. Corfield: I accept that. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, the Public Accounts Committee has already had a chance to look at the thing post hoc. The hands of any negotiator are tied if the negotiations are carried out in public. The hon. Member's party is fascinated by nationalisation. Is he really saying that every steel deal should be discussed in this House because it is public money, to the detriment of making a good deal with the Belgians or someone else?

Mr. John: It is hon. Members on this side of the House who have, in the Coal Industry Bill and elsewhere recently, pressed for parliamentary control of such expenditure. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman believes that the Public Accounts Committee has had adequate opportunity to discuss it, he is completely at variance with paragraph 91 of the Sixth


Report from the Expenditure Committee, which says:
It is our view that there has been inadequate Parliamentary control and too little information publicly given.
My point to hon. Members opposite who merely feel that a sort of worship of this achievement in itself is enough is that the greatest source of depression in this House has been the feeling of helplessness with which we are faced in voting ever larger sums for this in ignorance of the true state of affairs. It is a feeling not only that we are being ignored but that the value of Members is being discounted. I am not making a party point; it is a point common to both Governments. It is right that we should say so. It is not a healthy state of affairs for Parliament when we get the feeling that we cannot control and have no hope of obtaining information.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: Would the hon. Gentleman like to define what he means by control in these terms as a backbencher?

7.30 p.m.

Mr. John: The ability to scrutinise and check those items in the project which are not absolutely barred on the ground of commercial secrecy; the ability to report to the House of Commons and the ability to make a valid judgment about whether the expenditure of the money envisaged is justified in the national interest. That is what I mean by parliamentary control.
It is not merely a matter of the machinery with which Parliament has been equipped to deal with the matter, although the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson) and I had an interesting discussion in Committee about that matter. Also significant has been the reticence of Ministers and the failure to give information. If they were frank with the House now, as they have not been in the past, they would have to say that the failure to give information would not have broken commercial confidentiality.
The example which has been given of Parilament first learning the pricing from Ziegler at the French end does not show that there should have been less disclosure. It is a matter of shame for this

Parliament that it should have been first forced to learn about it in that way.
The main disadvantage of the way in which Ministers and Governments have gone about the project is that we are unable to judge the merits of the scheme, and whether it represents the worthwhile expenditure of public money. The anti-Concorde lobby has been accused of everything from irresponsibility to lack of patriotism. However, if what it is saying is only rumour, as we are told, its ability to gain credence amongst the public is precisely because the public are denied from official sources any other information upon which to judge properly and adequately.
The machinery of Parliament has been totally inadequate to control the project. As Conservative hon. Members conceded in Committee, we should have had a Select Committee from the start of the project to examine the matter.

Mr. Michael Heseltine: Mr. Michael Heseltine indicated dissent.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Cranley Onslow): The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Cranley Onslow) indicated dissent.

Mr. John: I see the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping and the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry shaking their heads, but can they, on looking back——

Mr. Heseltine: Mr. Heseltine rose——

Mr. John: Allow me to finish my sentence first. The Under-Secretary of State is as usual very vocal from a sedentary position. I will make my speech on my feet as I hope that he will make his speech on his feet later. I shall give way to the Minister when I finish my sentence. Ministerial control by the Ministers who have had control of the project has not been such as to enable them to sneer at the idea that the project should be examined by a Select Committee. There would be great advantages if that course were followed.

Mr. Heseltine: I can help the hon. Gentleman. I was trying to indicate that there may well have been a case for a Select Committee when the project was about to start. That was something about which we were open in Committee. I


should be interested in the hon. Gentleman's assessment of the sort of help he would give to the people who are trying to sell the project today, and how the setting up of a Select Committee would help the sales negotiations flow?

Mr. John: I am puzzled. It seems that we are becoming a rubber stamp for the commercial efforts of the hon. Gentleman. That is not the purpose of a Select Committee. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, or as he would know if he spent more time at the House and less in Concorde, the purpose of a Select Committee is to monitor the expenditure of public money. The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends have been quick enough to mutter about the £5 million or £9 million which was spent on school milk and what a profligate measure that was. In pence the hon. Member is becoming extremely pernickety, and yet he has proceeded without let or hindrance, and without the scrutiny of the House of Commons, to expend more on this project. He is exhibiting a lack of confidence in the merits of the scheme and damaging it.

Mr. Palmer: Is my hon. Friend aware that the Minister spent an extremely uncomfortable half hour yesterday in front of a Select Committee. I think he now knows what Select Committees are about.

Mr. John: It is to be hoped that he does, but his intervention did not encourage me in that direction. We are putting ourselves to further massive expenditure when the Bill becomes an Act. At the moment we have no greater safeguard than the promise given in Committee by the sedentary hon. Member, the Under-Secretary of State, that he would like to look at the machinery. He has not given a blanket refusal to give further machinery to Parliament. We are unwilling to be regarded merely as rubber stamps for Concorde's engineering excellence. We oppose those who would take out of parliamentary control projects of high technology. There is a feeling abroad that we are in great danger of becoming subjugated to technology. It is high time that we reminded ourselves that technology was made for man and not vice versa.
There is a grave error in the thinking of those who initiated, for example, steel

rationalisation. There is a real fear that people are being displaced without any opportunity to speak for themselves or for their voices to be heard by their elected representatives. If Parliament is to confine to itself the right to control the charges for false teeth, spectacles and school milk but is to deny itself the right to control the thousands of millions of pounds spent in the area of high technology, it is doing more than any of the Trotskyists are doing in this country to devalue the value of Parliament. I do not believe that that is what we should do or what Conservative hon. Members want to do. Therefore, we are disquieted about the way in which the matter has proceeded and the way in which Parliament has been completely unable to exercise its control over the project.
I invited the Minister to draw his attention to amendment No. 3. In paragraph 91 of the Sixth Report from the Expenditure Committee certain proposals were put forward to deal with the supply of information to Parliament. When I asked about that in Committee the Under-Secretary of State said:
The recommendations of the Expenditure Committee is being considered. It raises many wide issues, and it would be wrong for us to be rushed by the amendment into a decision."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee D, 25th January 1973; c. 197.]
I asked the hon. Gentleman when we would know of the Government's decision. He said that the short answer was when the Government had made up their minds.
We are talking about a report published on 6th July last year. The Government have already had eight months in which to consider that point. The amendment calls upon the Government within six months of the enactment of the Bill to put before Parliament its proposals for ensuring the supply of the information that was called for by the Expenditure Committee's Sixth Report. It will mean that the Government will have a maximum of one year from the publication of the report to make up its mind. That is more than enough time to enable the Government to comment meaningfully and to set up the sort of machinery which will enable us to put this episode behind us. It will enable us to go forward to projects of high technology with some measure of parliamentary control, and


to be able to say, as we are not able to do about this great project, that the House of Commons has been able to play a relevant and meaningful part in its development and in the control of the costings which the project provides and of which we are custodians.

Mr. Adley: The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) mentioned the steel industry and made the point that the Government and the British Steel Corporation are insisting on putting efficiency before people. Is not the British Steel Corporation simply recognising that if it is not efficient, if it is unable to produce steel economically which it can sell in the world market, there will not be any jobs left for anybody in a few years' time? As we are unable to live in the delightful old world of cottage industries, we must make up our minds to take decisions which in the short term may be hard for the steel workers in Pontypridd but in the long term should create security of employment for many people throughout the country.

Mr. John: If that is so I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman, who knows that I am not fundamentally antagonistic to Concorde, should not adduce that argument to his constituency. It is easy to play away on the employment front but it is not so easy at home. My point was that because of the way in which steel decisions have been taken, many of those who are displaced—the hon. Member should not undervalue the pain that it causes—feel angry and frustrated that their voices could not be heard here he cause the decision was taken elsewhere without information being adduced here.

Mr. Adley: I understand the hon. Gentleman perfectly. I should not like him to think that I was undervaluing the feelings of people. It is not my impression that we have been lax in this House, in the two and a half years that the hon. Gentleman and I have been here, in discussing the problems of the steel industry. I think that the steel workers' problems have been frequently aired in this place and they can be content that they have a powerful and oft-heard voice in this House.
I do not want to make a long speech, because we have been over this ground a

number of times. I should like to deal with some of the points which have been made. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) seemed to indicate that Concorde was solely a prestige project. This is patent nonsense. The aerospace industry is one of our major exporting industries. Unless we are prepared to invest money in manufacturing modern aircraft, which we recognise will go through good and bad times before reaching the sales point, we shall not have an aerospace industry in this country. It has nothing to do with blind prestige. It was a decision taken by Parliament to invest the country's resources in an industry which over the last 10 years has been responsible for a huge amount of exports and for which we would be hard put to find replacements were we not producing modern up-to-date aircraft.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) made much the same point. He could look at Concorde only as a large debit without looking forward to the time when we should reap the rewards, however long we may have to wait from the inception of the project until its eventual success.
I should like to deal in some detail with a question which has been raised tonight and on a number of occasions in the last two weeks—namely, the apparently changed situation caused by the failure of Pan American at this time—I stress "at this time"—to take up its options on Concorde. I am not alone in feeling that for too long now the options situation, which was initiated 10 years ago, has in many ways hung like a millstone round the project. All eyes have been riveted on the number of options to the exclusion of what the project was all about.
7.45 p.m.
I should like to examine not only Pan American's situation today compared with what it was in 1963 and 1966, the two dates at which it placed its options, but the situation of the market as it was then concerning the new fast aircraft of that day. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Sir F. Corfield), in a speech a few months ago, let slip a remark which I have no reason to believe he has regretted when he said that Pan American at present


could hardly afford to buy a bicycle. If some hon. Members were surprised when Pan American did not place firm orders for Concorde last week, they must be totally out of touch with what is going on in the boardrooms of Pan American, World Airways and a number of other world airlines.
Time magazine this week put the position quite simply:
Last week's rejection is not a surprise.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: About a year ago, in answer to a Question by me, the Government said that they had not the slightest doubt that all the American options, including that of Pan American, would be converted into firm orders.

Mr. Adley: The hon. Gentleman makes the point only too well. I do not think that at that time my hon. Friend would have said that at 10.37 p.m. on 31st January 1973 the sky would open and it would happen. I am confident that in due course Pan American and Trans World Airlines will place orders for Concorde. Last week I had informal discussions with two major international airlines, both of which in the last few months have expressed their unwillingness at this time to place immediate orders for Concorde. I discussed with them not only Concorde but Foulness. The answer given to me by one airline, which has recently cancelled options, was short and simple: "We shall be flying Concordes long before we are landing aircraft at Foulness."
I should like to deal in some detail with the point I was trying to make about interaction between an airline and its finances and the state of the new aircraft market and the concurrent order books of the aircraft manufacturers.
On 3rd June 1963, when Pan American took out options for six Concordes, the long-range Boeing 707 had 152 orders, of which 127 had been delivered, and there was a lead time of 12 to 14 months. On 14th July 1966, when Pan American took out two further options for Concorde, the long-range Boeing 707 had 330 aircraft ordered, 250 delivered and a lead time of 18 months, whilst the long-range DC8 had a lead time of 24 months.
There has been a complete turn-around in the world aircraft manufacturing situation since that time. We have moved, in

one of the periodic cycles of the aircraft manufacturing industry, from a seller's to a buyer's market. In these circumstances, I believe that an option position in a buyer's market is meaningless. The Boeing 747 has totally shattered the finances of most of the airlines that were placing options for Concorde, in completely different circumstances, seven to 10 years ago. In the four years before 1966 when Pan American concluded its final option position it had shown a profit of 209 million dollars. In the four years before cancellation of those options last week, the same airline was showing a deficit of 152 million dollars. That is the reality of the situation in which that airline—it is not alone—finds itself today.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus was reported to today's Daily Telegraph as saying that amongst the airlines of the countries that were likely to purchase Concorde only two, China and Iran, were likely at this moment to buy the aircraft other than BOAC and Air France. He said "only" as though China was unimportant. Here again, many people have fundamentally failed to understand the changed circumstances of today compared with the situation 10 years ago. China is already a major customer of the British aircraft manufacturing industry, a situation which could be described only as totally unforeseeable 10 years ago. Most people would admit that the chances are that the Chinese national airline is far more likely to expand more rapidly than any airline in the Western world which has or which had an option for Concorde. That being so, the words "only China", making it sound like an unimportant country without resources and one which is unlikely to expand, show a failure to appreciate the position.
The Russian supersonic TU144 is another factor which 10 years ago was not as widely foreseen as it might have been. The Financial Times today quoted Isvestia—I never thought that I should find myself quoting Isvestia with favour—as saying that the United States airlines had abandoned their options on Concorde because America wanted to retain its supremacy in aviation. That is not a point upon which I shall dwell. There seems little doubt, however, that the welfare of the American aircraft manufacturing industries is not totally absent


from the formulation of policy which some of the American carriers have had thrust upon them in the last few weeks.
The next point I wish to raise was made to me by one of the two major international airlines to which I have been speaking this week. The airline has recently cancelled its Concorde options. One of the senior executives, who told me he thought his airline would be flying Concorde before it was landing aircraft at Foulness, said that now that Boeing was talking about a 1,000-seater aircraft it believed that the inevitable result would be more and more of the regular first-class passengers demanding segregation by both time and aircraft from the other passengers. They would want smaller, faster aircraft of the Concorde type when faced with the prospect not only of flying with 999 other people but also of taking off and landing with them. The thought of queueing with a thousand other people to get through Customs would horrify them. If there are to be first-class passengers and they were offered the chance of travelling at twice the speed and with one-tenth the number of fellow passengers, I cannot believe that they would refuse. Therefore, there will be a substantial market for this aircraft. The history of successful new aircraft has followed this pattern.
It has been difficult to know whether I have been making a Third Reading speech or speaking to amendments. The Government are to be thoroughly commended for their stand on Concorde. I support them wholeheartedly. We have learned enough lessons from our recent aircraft manufacturing history to know whether we should give way to weakness and fall down when the going gets tough or whether we should bite on the bullet in the belief that we have a project which in due course will commend itself to the world airlines. We must bite on the bullet and I am delighted that the Government are doing just that.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: The enthusiasm for Concorde of hon. Members representing Bristol constituencies and their somewhat blind faith in the project is entirely understandable. It cannot be despised but it is sad and perhaps a little shortsighted. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr.

Benn) was speaking it was ostensibly in support of the clause. A subsequent speech from the Conservative side seemed to be more in support of the clause than the speech by my right hon. Friend.
If my right hon. Friend had travelled through the Committee stage of the Bill, the blind enthusiasm that he continues to show for the project, admirable though it may be from a constituency point of view, would have been slightly dented. If the new clause is passed and the Select Committee is set up, that will serve only to carry further the process begun in Standing Committee of introducing an element of reality into the proceedings.
We fully understand the dilemma which faces right hon. and hon. Members from Bristol. The cancellation of Concorde, which I believe must come, will have substantial consequences for the town and that is why they cannot accept any such proposition and why they also feel that those of us who have held all along that the project is not viable are doing something which is damaging to their constituents and damaging to the country as a whole. If that appears to be the case it is a pity, because it does not appear so to us.
I have been opposed to Concorde from the beginning and if the advice which I tendered from the back benches—and advice given by back-benchers does not often receive the attention it deserves—throughout the years had been followed we should not be in the position we are in today. Our aircraft industry would be engaged on viable and saleable projects. We should have a thriving industry working on wide-bodied aircraft and the country would be able to afford to put much more money into projects like the RB211 engine instead of striving to sell a supersonic aircraft to people who do not want to buy it.
It is suggested that all sorts of mysterious agencies are at work causing airlines with options to change their minds and say that they do not want Concorde. It is suggested that the cancellations are due to the machinations of the American aircraft industry and to goodness knows what else. No one appears to take any notice of the sound commercial reasons advanced by the airlines for saying that they do not want to buy the aircraft.
I wish to examine those reasons. One is that the airlines do not think that Concorde will pay. My right hon. Friend is following an argument now being put forward by the salesmen of Concorde. It is now being said that Concorde is a sort of loss leader, that the airline which has Concorde in its fleet will acquire prestige and standing in the world and that, although losing money heavily on the project, it will gain general prestige. That is the point to which the salesmen have been driven. They cannot sell the aircraft on its merits. We have to consider whether theirs is a valid argument, and I do not believe that it is.
The airline which flies Concorde will gain much more environmental criticism and disadvantage than it will gain prestige. The environmental argument has been pushed to one side during most of our discussions. I came into the critique of the Concorde project from the environmental angle. Although subsequently in examining the project over the years I became convinced that it was unviable economically, I still take the view that the basic reason why the project is objectionable is that it is the wrong type of project to embark upon and that even if it were commercially saleable it is not the sort of project into which the country should be putting all its eggs. We have to remember that practically all our aircraft eggs are in this one basket.
8.0 p.m.
One has only to consider the test flights over this country and the fact that, in addition to the ordinary running of the aircraft, considerable compensation had to be paid for the damage done during those flights. Presumably the aircraft will be flown by commercial airlines over other countries. No one has suggested that it can be confined to the sea. No one has suggested that even when it is flying over the sea it will not pass over ships and perhaps damage them. No one has added up the consequences of flying over some inhabited countries and whether that would not add still further to the disadvantages of flying the aircraft.
Before citing the arguments which have been put forward by the airlines, perhaps I might add one word to what the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Adley) said about the option position. He seemed to criticise the whole

option proposition, and perhaps I ought to say a word on behalf of those who have been trying to sell the Concorde in the past. I believe that the hon. Gentleman was not in the House in 1964, 1965 and 1966. If he had been he would have known that the option proposition was the only basis on which the House could be persuaded to put the necessary money into the project. At the time the Government were selling options. That was the only way in which this House could be persuaded to find the money needed to advance the project. There was no alternative but to seek options and to argue for a number of years that an option more or less amounted to a firm order. For a long time the sharp distinction which we now see between an option and a firm order and the gradations which we now know to exist were blurred. It was suggested at one time that we should have a production line of some 200 aircraft. It was on that basis that the project went ahead. Now we find the situation sadly changed.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East seemed to be arguing against the new clause. What I thought he said was that, whether the expenditure exceeded £300 million or not, for the next two years we had to go full steam ahead. He seemed to be saying that we had to go on with blind faith and hope that as a result of selling the aircraft the consequences of having it in service would be that the aircraft would gain such prestige that further orders would flow in from America and elsewhere. However I do not think that my right hon. Friend can say that and simultaneously introduce a new clause which suggests the appointment of a Select Committee, because the consequence of that might be that the "full steam ahead with our eyes closed" which my right hon. Friend seems to suggest would be resisted by such a process.

Mr. Benn: I am sure that my hon. Friend wants to be fair. He will recall that on Second Reading I moved the Opposition's amendment that the Bill should go to a Select Committee forthwith. The new clause is slightly less powerful because we lost the main amendment. But I hope that my hon. Friend will acquit me of any desire to avoid full public discussion. I am firmly of the view that the House is entitled to


know now more than it is allowed to know.

Mr. Jenkins: I accept my right hon. Friend's view about that and since my belief in the new clause is such that it is my intention not only to speak in favour of it but to vote for it, I hope that my right hon. Friend will join me in the Division Lobby as evidence of his belief in the clause. What my right hon. Friend has just said encourages me in the belief that we intend to divide the House on this issue and that we are serious in our attitude to the new clause. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that indication.

Mr. Adley: For the record, the hon. Gentleman is right when he says that I was not a Member of the House in 1964, 1965 or 1966. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman's consistent opposition to the Concorde with which I do not agree. However, I hope he is not suggesting that it is purely because I represent a Bristol constituency that I am in favour of the project. That fact means that I have a chance fully and thoroughly to examine the situation and to spend a great deal of time looking at the project and trying to understand it. That is why I support it.

Mr. Jenkins: I am wholly opposed to aircraft noise, and it is coincidental that I happen to live in Putney where there is a great deal of it. My feeling against aircraft noise is just as firm as that of the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East in favour of Concorde, and neither viewpoint has anything to do with the fact that the hon. Gentleman represents a Bristol constituency and that I am the Member for Putney. I quite accept that.
Why, then, is it that these airlines have not bought the Concorde if it is the development which it is said to be? It might be thought that the airlines would want to be in there among the first and showing the way. According to my information there are a number of reasons which have persuaded the American airlines that it is not a good idea. The purchase price per seat compared with a subsonic aircraft is between eight and 10 times as high. The operating costs per seat mile are about twice as high. The fuel consumption per seat is roughly

three times as high. The range is not much more than half that of the ordinary average new subsonic jet. The payload is about one-quarter. The productivity in terms of miles flown per day is at best about 50 per cent. higher. The operating life is shorter. Those are some of the firm commercial considerations which I believe have brought about the decision of the airlines not to proceed with their options.
It is far from my wish that the British aerospace industry should not be successful. It is an industry which in terms of the quality of skills that it employs is unrivalled in the world. Unfortunately, it has been on a wrong course. It was very unfortunate that it did not get off that wrong course very much earlier. It used to be argued in 1965, 1966 and 1967 that having gone as far as we had, we could not get off now. It seems to me that now is precisely the time when it is necessary to get off. The aircraft has flown. It has proved that it can do all that it was said to do. It has shown that it is a fine aircraft. But it has also shown that at this stage it is not a commercially viable proposition. If we go on spending £1½million a week we shall not be doing our country any service and we shall not be doing the British aerospace industry any service either.
For those reasons it is my intention to record my firm conviction that a mistake is being made. I shall do that by voting in favour of the new clause. I am sure that those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are in favour of Concorde will have sufficient faith in the project to vote that it should be given that careful consideration to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East referred.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: The clause and the two amendments seem to me to cover different ground, and I must say that I would have no particular objection to a White Paper being published.
The debate has concerned itself with the need for greater knowledge being given to Parliament so that we can the better make up our minds about projects. To hear the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John), we might think that Parliament does not have any say throughout the year. In fact, of course, we can stop


projects simply by refusing to give them money. That right has always been ours. If either Government had wished to stop the Concorde project, they had the power to do so, always allowing for the treaty.
I hope that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) will forgive my saying that it is wrong to suggest that Concorde is the first vehicle for rich men's travel, as if all other vehicles had been for poor men's travel. That is to stand an argument on its head. I cannot think of a single means of travel, except walking, that has not started as a vehicle for rich men and then become a vehicle for poor men.

Mr. Grimond: May I suggest the horse?

Mr. McNair-Wilson: The right hon. Gentleman may suggest a horse, but as he is a human being I shall not put him in that category.
We are allowing ourselves to be mesmerised by the words "Select Committee", as if once it has been set up Parliament has a new instrument that will control projects with very fine tuning and will be able to stay the hand of the executive if the Select Committee so desires. That is not the case. Select Committees are still in an embryonic state, and I do not believe that we have yet created the right instrument for parliamentary control. We certainly have nothing like the control they have in the United States. For instance, a Select Committee can examine all sorts of witnesses, produce recommendations, and publish thick reports, but there is no requirement on the Government to debate its reports or accept the recommendations.

Mr. Palmer: Why does the hon. Gentleman say that Select Committees are in an embryonic stage? They are one of the oldest instruments the House possesses.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: My knowledge of Select Committees is somewhat embryonic, but I was under the impression that there were two types, and that the one we are discussing is quite a new idea in parliamentary terms. I shall not pursue the point, because I have only just been put on a Select Committee. But what I have said as criticism of the Select Committee procedure holds good, that there

is no requirement for the Government to accept the Select Committees' recommendations, nor to find time for their reports to be debated. Those two checks could be introduced almost immediately without any loss to anyone. Indeed, I should like to feel that if a Government set up a Select Committee they are, at least to some extent, duty bound to accept its recommendations or find time for a more or less immediate debate once they have said whether they will accept the recommendations.

Mr. Dan Jones: My intervention will be brief. I hope that we shall all be brief, so that every hon. Member present may take part in the debate. I ask the hon. Gentleman to have greater respect for Select Committees. I do so not on behalf of Select Committees as such but because there is a strong anti-Concorde lobby, and if we turn down the suggestion we shall give it greater ammunition.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: I was going on to say that I support the Bill unamended, and that I continue to object to the concept of a Select Committee to look into the project at this time. I am entirely behind the Concorde project, like the hon. Gentleman, I think, and, therefore, wish to give as much power to the Government's arm as I can.
Those of us who served on the Committee considering the Bill did so against the dismal background of the cancellation of the options. That should not cloud our judgment about the project. When we read the Press it is very easy to imagine that Pan-Am, TWA and all the great names in the airline business are living through fat years and, therefore, made the decision to cancel the options because the aircraft was not good enough. In fact, they are just emerging from some of the leanest years they can remember. Therefore, it was quite reasonable for them to cancel their option, as they know the aircraft will be around and they can buy it when they are rather more flush with cash. Indeed, cancelling the options now provides them with badly needed money that has been residing with BAC and Aerospatiale.
Therefore, I do not consider that the cancellation of the options is more than a temporary setback. I am firmly of the opinion that it is only when the aircraft


is in service, proving its route viability and, no doubt, its profitability, that we can say whether those great airlines can afford to opt out of supersonic travel.
However, I want to return to the question of monitoring a project like Concorde. When I say that I accept the Bill without amendment and, therefore, that the Government should have the right to lend up to £350 million more to BAC and Rolls-Royce to complete the project, I include in my acceptance the willingness of the Government to monitor the programme on behalf of the taxpayer and Parliament to the best of their ability, using such monitoring skills as are possessed in Whitehall. Expenditure of such vast sums of money must require that monitoring.
But here I must refer to the report recently published by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir David Pitblado, about the project. He sets out in the greatest detail I have ever read most of the questions we have been talking about tonight. His strictures against BAC and Rolls-Royce deserve the most careful consideration by Parliament. He is obviously concerned about what he thinks was the faulty cost-estimating by BAC between March 1968 and November 1970, and about Rolls-Royce's excessive manufacturing and purchasing of engine spares and components up to 1970.
It is interesting that those are the years he chooses, because the Labour administration was then in power. Therefore, when I heard the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) telling us tonight that he has suddenly become converted to the concept of Government openness, I wondered whether he might not have allowed his conversion to come a few years before, when it would have meant something, rather than the slightly hollow phrases we heard tonight.

Mr. Bishop: Would the hon. Gentle man have appreciated my right hon. Friend's gesture if, feeling that a Select Committee might have been set up years ago and yet wanting to appear blameless, my right hon. Friend had gone on in the same blind way as the hon. Gentleman, saying that he did not think a Select Committee was therefore needed at any time? In many ways, at the start of a project

when one is unaware of the extent of escalation one may not think of the need to have a Select Committee. But surely at the later stages, when spending has escalated enormously, it is to the credit of anyone who says "We need a Select Committee now". This is not a party point but merely a question of wise monitoring of money.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: In the eyes of the Church, I think, a conversion, even at the eleventh hour, is welcome. I am not quite certain whether we can bring the divine presence into Parliament to that extent. While I appreciate what the hon. Member has been saying in defence of his colleague, at the same time I think one may well wonder whether this conversion is not something else.
I want, curiously enough, for a moment to defend his right hon. Friend and to ask why it was that he did not then feel that a Select Committee or more openness would have been relevant to the project. I suggest that he had the responsibility for that project and he was responsible ultimately, as indeed is any Minister, for the project to the British taxpayer for the way the money is spent and the investment cared for. Is it not just possible that the reason his right hon. Friend did not give way to the concept of a Select Committee and the reason he was so reluctant to give very much information to Parliament was that he felt that such information as Parliament might have wanted would have done little to educate Parliament but might have given a great number of hostages to fortune for those who had another involvements in the project; namely, the desire to see how it was costed and generally to gain commercial knowledge at the expense of the project. Could he, therefore, not have been an honest husbandman taking care of something which had been entrusted to him, aware perhaps that, although Parliament might consider it had the right to this knowledge, it could do very little with the knowledge when it had it, but that that knowledge might be a very serious danger and threat to the overall success of the project?

Mr. Bishop: I hesitate to intervene, but I think the hon. Member is making a very important point, although I disagree with him. Surely, putting the argument the other way round, as one is entitled


to do, we are saying to the world customers that we are in favour of the project going on only because they are kept in complete ignorance of all the important aspects about which they ought to know, and, indeed, if they had the facts, they might instead take a different view. Although I do not suggest that is the case, critics are entitled to put that kind of interpretation on it.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: One is perfectly entitled to that point of view, but, in fact, there is a great mass of information available about this aircraft if we want it and all sorts of arguments from every point of view. Mary Goldring of the Economist has been against the project almost from the word go and has always, because she is an extremely effective aviation correspondent, backed up her statements with facts and figures to prove them. Other people have been in favour of it. We ourselves in Parliament have a considerable freedom to ask questions. We have, therefore, to get this into perspective.
I want now to develop the point further. The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East was, I think, right, just as I think my hon. Friend tonight will be right, in not wishing to give away more than certain information because he had the responsibility to the taxpayer and to Parliament to ensure that this project was brought to a successful conclusion.
I want for a moment to draw a parallel. Reference has already been made to security projects. It is the case that no military aircraft project is ever revealed in full to Parliament. Indeed, Parliament does not expect to know, because there is a security problem. But we would surely be very out of date if we did not realise that there is such a thing as commercial security. Indeed, we all know there is because on the television screen and in our national newspapers we read about commercial espionage and about people who are paid by firms to gain information about a competitor, with photographs, literature and so on. Are we, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, to be less careful with this great project which we are administering for the British taxpayer just because a few parliamentarians say "Oh, well, I do not know all I wanted to"? That would be foolish and reckless beyond belief.
However, I believe sometimes that Whitehall and Parliament are unduly secretive. I have been lectured before now by civil servants on what they describe as "the need to know". Probably if one has got to that point one does not even need to know one's name, but it is a ridiculous argument because it means that the slightest probing for the most obvious fact creates all sorts of reservations as if somehow Whitehall had a greater responsibility than we have. If we believe in democracy, in the end it is we who have that responsibility and it is we who should be able to say to our Minister "No, please, do not give away that information—we do not want you to."

Mr. Edelman: In presenting his very interesting thesis that the limitation of information is somehow in the interests of any given aviation project, would the hon. Member apply the same criteria to, say, the RB211?

Mr. McNair-Wilson: I am glad the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) has raised that point because it brings me to my next point.
We are saying, I think, that Members of Parliament could have monitored Concorde more effectively if we had known over a period of time the sort of issues involved as to expenditure and so on; yet it was the right hon. Member for Bristol. South-East—and I fear I have quoted this many times but it struck me so forcibly that I shall never forget it while I live—who said during one of the RB211 debates—he admitted it—that no official in his Ministry of Technology had the knowledge of the advance technology of that engine to be able to monitor it against what Rolls-Royce said was the fact. That was a very honest statement and one to which we should all pay the greatest attention.

Mr. Edelman: Perhaps we should get better civil servants.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: The position to which I believe we are coming and which again in my view Sir David Pitblado has revealed is that there still probably exists a lack of ability in the Ministry for Aerospace and Shipping or the Department of Trade and Industry to monitor in the way which allows an official to


say "You do not need to spend this; you should not have done that." I suspect they are still in a position where they can be led by the nose by the representatives of the companies concerned. The comments which he has made, to which I have already referred, on BAC and Rolls-Royce over expenditure bear out that point.
We should be concerning ourselves far more with how to get the skills into the Ministries than with whether we as Members of Parliament having all sorts of other interests can in any sense be merely amateur civil servants whose knowledge will be abysmal when compared with those officials whose job it is to do the task.
I suggest that if the instrument we choose is a Select Committee, despite what the hon. Member for Newark (Mr. Bishop) has said, it is not enough to be able to say that the Committee can sit in camera from time to time. We must create something different, and when we have set up this Select Committee with Members from both sides of the House serving on it we should let those Members act on behalf of all of us without saying "I, too, must know". This will be difficult to carry out because, if I am right about the commercial security angle, the Committee will have to sit in camera far more than in open session. This in turn means that we must trust the way the Committee works and trust it totally if it says "You need not worry about Concorde: it is on the right lines." Something different from what we have at present will, therefore, be necessary. We must look at the whole question of Select Committees in terms of this sort of project.
I feel that we must not allow ourselves to become mesmerised by the idea that Concorde is an everyday happening where Parliament is concerned, because it is not. I cannot think of another great commercial aircraft project for which Parliament has had the responsibility that we have with Concorde. Indeed, I find it difficult to think of a commercial project of that type for which we have ever had a responsibility, and it is incredible to hear comparisons drawn between Concorde and the hovertrain. The hover-train is a research vehicle—therefore we should know about it. Concorde is a

commercial project, and we are here to help it be a great success as I believe it will be in the air markets of the world.
In conclusion, on Tuesday I asked my hon. Friend whether he could tell us anything about the South African trials of the aircraft and the new noise levels of the engine. I should be grateful if he would say something about that when winding-up the debate tonight.

8.30 p.m.

Mr. Palmer: I do not know why the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson) should be quite so bitter about Select Committees. He spoke in a similar vein on Second Reading. When he said that Select Committees were embryonic on their development I thought that that was historically inaccurate. I remember reading that in the seventeenth century the House of Commons appointed a Select Committee to inquire into why General Waller, the Parliamentary General, lost the battle of Roundaway Down against the Loyalists. I cannot remember the conclusion to which that Committee came, but there is no doubt that Select Committees are old instruments and very powerful.

Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: Am I not right in thinking that Select Committees as we now operate them are meant to be more on the lines of a senatorial investigation rather than on the line the hon. Gentleman is suggesting?

Mr. Palmer: I do not wish to take up the time of the House by going into an historical digression. I merely say that, historically, Congressional Committees and British Select Committees came from the same root.
During part of the week at any rate I am a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins). I assure him that I sleep soundly at night —when I have a chance of getting to bed —in spite of the noise of aircraft overhead. Had my hon. Friend been here I should have told him that Bristol Members have faith in Concorde. We have an obvious constituency interest, but it would be wrong to suggest that we have a blind faith in the project. That would be wrong.
A Bristol Member inherits one-sixth of Burke's mantle, because there are six of us now. Burke was one of the two


Members for Bristol at the time and it was his famous dictum that a Member is a representative and not a delegate. I accept that, and as an inheritor of one-sixth of Burke's mantle I have to tell the House that if I thought that Concorde was wrong for the country, I hope that I should have the courage to say so in spite of my constituency interest.
I support Concorde—and have done from the beginning—not merely because I am a Bristol Member but because I believe that the future of this country depends largely on its support for advanced technology and advanced high technology. I could not accept the somewhat "spinning wheel" approach of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), the former Leader of the Liberal Party, that we should in some way be doubtful about the virtues of technology. As a Socialist, I take the view that anti-technology is a profoundly reactionary slogan and would lead mankind backward rather than forward. Therefore my feeling about Concorde is that it is an aspect of high technology which must be kept to the forefront if the everyday living standards of people not only in Bristol but in Scotland and elsewhere are to be maintained. In addition, if we maintain our own standards of life by high technology we are thereby in a much stronger position to help those parts of the world where the standard of living is not as advanced as our own.
The other argument—used principally by the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne)—is the familiar taxpayer one that it costs a tremendous amount of money which the country cannot afford. The hon. Gentleman cannot see why his constituents who will not get any direct benefit should have to bear part of the cost of this project. That is broadly his argument.
That argument is based upon assuming an absolute division between public and private enterprise, but that cannot be done these days. It is all social expenditure in one form or another. If one considers the past development of the electricity supply industry, with which I am fairly well acquainted, one realises that the cost of the development of electricity was tremendous, but it was paid for differently. It was paid for directly by means of high prices charged to the early con-

sumers of electricity, but the total social cost was enormous. An advanced aircraft project cannot be paid for on an "as-you-go" basis. The only way in which it can be paid for, if it is right to undertake it at all, is out of the public purse.
We as Bristol Members of Parliament have a very real Concorde employment interest on behalf of our constituents, but there is nevertheless resentment among Bristol aircraft workers at all levels that Bristol should be quite so dependent upon one particular project. There has not been a good, balanced development of the aircraft industry, but that is another argument. At the moment we have Concorde in the process of being made and it is obvious that it must now be sold.
As a supporter of Concorde, I wish to say why I should still like a Select Committee to be set up. I give three reasons for this. The first is that I believe that every Bill of a technological character in which party controversy does not enter very greatly should as a matter of course be referred not to a Standing Committee, where only the Minister answers and where outside experts must answer through the mouth of the Minister, but to a Select Committee. The great advantage of a Select Committee is that it can call witnesses before it. It can call not only Ministers but high-level civil servants—and for that matter low-level civil servants—trade unionists engaged on a project and independent outside experts.
One of the greatest frustrations in this House in my experience has been to serve on a Standing Committee and to be told by a Minister "The advice I am giving the Committee is based upon the best expert opinion I have been able to receive", yet members of the Standing Committee are not in a position to interview those same independent experts. I appreciate that we lost the best opportunity on Second Reading, but I support the present proposal that if the expenditure goes beyond a prescribed amount the question should go before a Select Committee. That is a much sounder approach than going before the conventional Standing Committee through which the Bill has already passed.
My second reason is this. Those of us who are Bristol Members of course keep closely in touch—particularly the


Labour Members, although I make no party point there—with the workers concerned. That is certainly true of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Michael Cocks), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) and myself. We are continually in touch with trade unionists and their representatives at Filton. They bring to us a good deal of what appears to be convincing evidence that there is prodigious waste on Concorde. Money is being spent apparently wastefully on what one may describe only as the frills. It has been said, for instance, that more money has been spent on pilots' seats for Concorde than on the whole of the hover-train project.
There are allegations. Surely it should be possible for this House to say not that we are against production of this flying machine, but that we are against public money being wasted on what are perhaps non-essentials.

Mr. Michael Heseltine: The hon. Member will of course be fully aware that this matter is dealt with in the report by the Comptroller and Auditor-General. It is fully dealt with, including the cost of seats and the final estimates. This is all available to Parliament and is also related in this week's Flight.

Mr. Palmer: I appreciate that the Public Accounts Committee has the power, the right and the duty to inquire into public expenditure, but the trouble is that it always does it when it is too late. There may be criticism or blame but it is not possible for the PAC to carry out checks during the course of a project. With heavy public technology expenditure of this kind, I believe that to have a Select Committee at an early stage is essential.
As I have said, hon. Members from Bristol get from trade union circles allegations of waste and I believe that these matters have to be looked into at the time. We should be able to ask why it is necessary, for example, to have such elaborate pilots' seats or, for that matter, passenger seats. Is it not possible to do it more cheaply? For the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East to say that this is a matter for the Government and not for the House means that he is abdi-

cating his personal responsibility for the correct and economical use of public funds.
My final reason for advocating a Select Committee at this stage is that I have been irritated to read in our newspapers about the information, detailed and given in public, which has been put before the French Chamber of Deputies on the production of the Concorde. That information is not available, as far as I can judge, even after reading through the reports of the Standing Committee, to Members of this House. In this sense, perhaps the methods of French Chamber of Deputies in accounting for public money as it is being spent are superior to ours.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. William Rodgers), my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr. Albu) and I put down the original motion which called for a Select Committee to consider the Concorde project. I am glad to say that our point of view was later adopted officially by the Opposition. But I very much regret that once again we have reached the point where the Government are still resisting our reasonable request. I hope that in future when Bills of this kind are being considered we shall have the good sense as parliamentarians to pass them to Committees which really can examine them properly.

Mr. Carol Mather: The hon. Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) and I share a joint interest, albeit at opposite ends, in the production line of the Concorde. He referred to lack of information, but the information is there if one looks for it. Particularly if one represents a constituency where the Concorde is produced, there is every opportunity to obtain the information one needs as a Member of Parliament.
I have great faith in the Concorde because I believe that the present vogue for wide-bodied aircraft will not be popular. Anyone who has travelled in the Boeing jumbo 747s on long journeys and has been through the difficulties of customs and security checks and of arriving at airports which have not the right facilities will feel naturally inclined to go back to smaller aircraft, particularly if we are, as my hon. Friend the Member


for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Adley) suggests, to have larger aircraft with up to 1,000 seats. I think that the swing back to smaller faster aircraft will be very marked.
With the discomfort of ordinary aircraft, anything that will cut down the amount of time which people have to spend in the air is something which very many people will go for. So I have great faith in Concorde in the long term.
8.45 p.m.
Amendment No. 2 suggests that on enactment of the Bill a White Paper shall be published. I do not understand that. If there is a horse that is likely to bolt, that would be closing the stable door after it had bolted. It is suggested that the White Paper should examine the history of the project, which is well known, the current prospects, which are discussed endlessly in the newspapers, and expectations, which are entirely a matter of judgment. Those are all matters that we could do without. Discussion of these subjects as a matter of course at the end of each year, when we are trying to sell the aircraft, would only be a self-inflicted wound.
The hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins)—as he always has been —is motivated by the aircraft noise aspect. My constituency, Esher, shares a similar problem, but a large part of the aircraft industry is located in Weybridge, and that is where the Concorde is being made. Perhaps I take a more balanced view than he does on that aspect.
At Weybridge there is a work force of 7,000 men, almost all of whom are engaged on the Concorde project. We have had disappointments in the last few years over the BAC311 and in the last two and a half years there have been redundancies of 1,600 men, so we are sensitive to the prospects of Concorde. Anxiety is natural. There is anxiety about the future of the production line and where it will be located, as Sir George Edwards has said. Is it possible for two production lines to continue to run? If one production line is closed down, although that country is still able to make bits of the aircraft, there will be greater danger of dispersal of the working force and the design teams. That will affect not only the country's ability to

get on with this aircraft in happier times but also its capability to build other aircraft projects.
On the prospects, paradoxically the cancellation of options has meant that the makers of Concorde are in a much better position to go out and sell it with the promise of early delivery, which they could not do before. Therefore, the ratio of customers available to aircraft available is now much more nearly in balance.
May I say a word on collaborative projects as a whole? If we are to retain and exploit our ability to make bits of aircraft, as we are doing with Concorde, we must also retain the ability to make complete aircraft, otherwise we shall not be able to make the bits. The motivation of the men working on building the aircraft is much greater if they can actually see the product at the end of the line as opposed to only a part of it.
It is important to my constituents that the House tonight should show its determination to continue this project which, unlike almost any other aircraft project, has been supported by successive Governments.

8.50 p.m.

Mr. Edelman: The sub-title of this debate should perhaps be the question: Is the British taxpayer being gazumped by the aircraft industry?—because I believe the whole anxiety expressed both by those who are in favour of Concorde and by those who are opposed to it lies in the fact that, whenever the customer has gone to his supplier and asked him to deliver the goods, the supplier has repeatedly said "Yes, you can have them but you will have to pay more money." For my own part, I remain a committed supporter of Concorde. I support Concorde today as I did in 1964 when many of my hon. Friends were opposed to it.
The House will recall that in 1964 an economic White Paper was produced in which the Government of the day stated their opposition to prestige projects, including Concorde. For my part, even then I thought that a prestige project was not necessarily something to be dismissed. There was, I thought at the time, a cash value in prestige and something which could be compounded and translated into benefit for the country, not only in the technological advantage represented by an


aircraft like Concorde, not only in the substantial subsidiary benefits which would arise from it, but also, ultimately, the fact that Britain would pioneer a supersonic aircraft was something which would remain to our credit and in future would bring the most valuable results. But at the time nobody could possibly have thought that the cost of Concorde would have risen by such extraordinary leaps and bounds to a position today in which we are now paying almost £500 million as our share of the aircraft, and even now we cannot be certain that the aircraft will be delivered as originally projected and thereafter go into production.
There is, therefore, a natural disquiet in the country, and even those who are most firmly committed to the continuing development—because, after all, the development is not yet complete—and the production of the aircraft, and among them I include myself, are concerned, anxious and disturbed about the way in which the cost of the aircraft has risen. There are today two extreme schools of thought. There are those who, like the sailors of Christopher Columbus when he was within 50 miles of the shores of America, say "turn back because we cannot see land." On the other hand, there are those who are rather like the man who fell from the top of a 20-storey skyscraper and as he was passing the tenth floor said "so far, so good."
I believe the feeling many of us have is that we ought really to have some idea of whether there is a safety net which will protect the taxpayer, who has been brought into the discussion so often tonight, which will make sure that we really can find some sound and safe basis for the whole project; because, although my right hon. Friend, using a current catch phrase, said we must keep our nerve, a term the Minister also used, and while it is a fine thing to keep one's nerve, one must realise where one is going. I am sure the Gadarene swine also kept their nerve but they did not realise where their journey would lead them.
That is why we on this side above all are concerned with establishing a Select Committee, which will inquire into the reasons why the cost of this aircraft has risen in such a dramatic way. For my own part, I would have preferred

a tribunal of inquiry because I feel there are certain guilty men in this particular project who should be brought to book. When I describe them as "guilty men" I do not mean guilty in any criminal sense. But there is a degree of culpability involved in the use of public money without adequate return or proper accountancy. This has been established by the Public Accounts Committee and by the Expenditure Committee. There are those who are prepared, year in and year out, to use public money, to give hopelessly optimistic promises of what they will deliver, and in the end to come back to the House and say "You must go on paying because if you do not do so the project will fall to the ground, and you will have to spend not only the money you originally estimated but vast additional sums". In a sense this House has been blackmailed by those who are equally the debtors of this House.
In asking for a Select Committee we are merely underlining the need for public accountability. We are saying that, whatever the intra-ministerial or intra-company devices used for monitoring progress of the contract, more questions should be asked—and they are political rather than technical questions. Concorde has always been a political aircraft in the sense that by parliamentary decision we decided to go ahead on a basis of functional co-operation with the French to produce a joint pace-making European project. The majority of people regarded the aircraft as an innovating operation which went to the frontiers of scientific knowledge. It was looked upon as something which would redound to the prestige of Britain and our French partners. Therefore, the decision to manufacture the aircraft was a parliamentary and political decision.
The hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson) spoke about the technical ignorance of Members of Parliament and tended to underrate the fact that Parliament had a responsibility for making certain political judgments affecting projects which it sponsored and invited the taxpayer to pay for. Parliament is fully entitled to pose comprehensive questions such as the question "Why have costs escalated?" That is a basic question. We ask the Minister questions and he answers them extremely well, but he does not get to the root of the matter, namely, "Why have the costs


increased in this dramatic way?" This question has never been adequately answered because the Minister knows only the accountancy statistics, but he does not know why the costs have risen in this way.

Mr. Michael Heseltine: There are two reasons why costs have risen. They have been explained many times, and have been inquired into by the Public Accounts Committee on many occasions. First, there is inflation which has contributed substantially to the situation. Secondly, there is the fact that nobody has yet found a way of pricing adequately in advance projects involving high technology exploration.

Mr. Edelman: With respect to the Minister, that is a glib answer and does not deal with the basic question of whether management has been at fault in allowing costs to rise in this way. Even taking inflation into account, the moment the Minister talks about the unknown, he is evading the question. The House is entitled to know why there has been a threefold increase in the cost of Concorde since the first estimates were made. The Public Accounts Committee has drawn attention to the fact that there has been an inadequate amount of information. It is not just a matter of a firm returning work sheets showing how many hours have been worked on any given operation, or how much material has been used, nor is it a question of the contractor showing how sums are made up.
9.0 p.m.
What we want to know and are entitled to know is why these sums were inflated in this way. I will give one simple illustration. We want to know whether orders were given in time to contractors and sub-contractors to make sure that the flow of work was not interrupted and that men were not left without materials. We want to know whether management was effective in dealing with this particular project. We do not know that. Although the Minister can produce all the accounts, the debits, the credits and so on, he is not answering the fundamental question of whether management was effective in dealing with Concorde. That is something we are entitled to know.

Mr. Heseltine: I have been involved in many decisions recently of exactly the sort to which the hon. Gentleman draws the attention of the House and I know of no occasion on which the manufacturers have asked for authorisation for which certain decisions had to be taken and where they have been held up.

Mr. Edelman: I am inhibited from giving further examples, and that illustrates why we are asking for a Select Committee. When one approaches a company, it says "We have given this information privately but you cannot ask a question in the House because you will interfere with our relationship with Whitehall". The moment one asks the Minister whether something has taken place, he says "I cannot give you the answer to that because it will interfere with our confidential relationship with the company."

Mr. Russell Kerr: Is my hon. Friend aware that unwittingly he is being much too kind to the predecessors of the Minister? Going back 10 years, I recollect that the estimates of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Julian Amery) were rather less than one-fifth of the present cost, not one-third.

Mr. Edelman: I am obliged to my hon. Friend. I was being kind because I did not want to overstate the case.
We are dealing now not in millions but in hundreds of millions. In this very thin House tonight we are protesting at the way these millions have accumulated without adequate reference to this House, without adequate accountancy to this House and, above all, without an adequate explanation of how the project has increased in this way, which is sufficient entitlement for us to ask for a Select Committee.
I suspect—and again I make no attribution of ill intent to anybody—that in a sense projects such as this become a honeypot for those who are seeking easy money. They become a honeypot because once one has a project based on cost-plus or on price to be agreed, which has been the basis of the Concorde development, obviously it does not matter whether the job is finished tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. The contractors are being paid and


although there are high-minded people involved who recognise the national importance of the Concorde—to which I subscribe, as I would emphasise tonight—there are others who are concerned only with their immediate frame of reference. Therefore, whether the work is delivered on time or is delayed is of no acute concern to them.

Mr. Dan Jones: I want to ask my hon. Friend, for whom I have great personal regard, not to press that statement about easy money too far. I have worked in the aircraft industry, I have worked for research and development people, I have worked in research and development with Millbank. So I know from first-hand experience that these are very decent people, who work very hard and indeed work to the advantage of the nation. Easy money is hardly a term that can be applied to them.

Mr. Edelman: My hon. Friend must not misrepresent me or unwittingly distort what I was saying. I think it was crystal clear to most of my hon. Friends that I was not talking of those concerned physically and actively in the production of the aircraft. My criticism is of management.

Mr. Jones: I mean management.

Mr. Edelman: In that case I say to my hon. Friend that while he is prepared to give this blank cheque to management, I am not prepared to do so.

Mr. Jones: I did not say that.

Mr. Edelman: That is precisely why a Select Committee is necessary to examine the extraordinary enigma of why, despite inflation, despite the fact that in certain respects the contractors are working in unknown areas of technology, costs have risen in this way. To that question there has been no answer. The hon. Gentleman and many of his Friends are merely concerned with the mathematics of accountancy but not with the basis of those mathematics.
The accountant who sees a balance sheet or adds up the work sheets does not know what is going on in the factory, whether the processes of management have been such as to produce delays, whether they have interfered with the

flow of work or whether management has in one way or another been extravagant. The Minister knows Coventry well because a few years ago we had some electoral co-operation. He also knows that the Olympus 593 was made there by skilled men, highly energetic men, devoted and dedicated men. The workers at Rolls-Royce have consistently upheld the production of Concorde. They have come to see me and some of my hon. Friends time after time, not seeking to avoid work as some have suggested the shop stewards were doing, but seeking to maintain the flow of work, seeking to make sure that they had the opportunity of participating in this great patriotic endeavour.
They have pointed out to me that there have been difficulties—I will not overstate the position—connected with management which led to the catastrophe of the collapse of Rolls-Royce and which must spill over, by way of rising costs, to the Olympus 593. What has happened in Coventry must, I am sure, have happened in Bristol. To say that is in no sense to cast any reflection on those operationally concerned in the manufacture of the aircraft. They are in the forefront of those who want to make the project succeed. It is they who come in deputations to this House, who form action committees and who apply themselves to the task of ensuring, if this project is to succeed, that they play their full part.
There remains the question, if we are to proceed with Concorde as I fervently hope we will, of whether some deal is to be done with the French behind our backs which will result in the closing of a production line in this country in favour of a production line in France. I can declare my own bona fides. I am a Francophile and strongly in favour of Franco-British co-operation. This is a Franco-British project based on equality of co-operation and contribution. To close down a British production line in favour of a French production line in the interests of some bogus form of rationalisation would be passionately resisted in this country, and not only by the aircraft workers.
Tonight I offer a warning to the Minister. If that were to happen it would be bitterly resented. It would darken still further the climate of industrial relations


which is already obscured by the Government's policy. I hope we will be given an assurance that it will not.
We are now faced with certain critics of Concorde whose motives—I do not refer to any hon. Members—are impure. I have grave doubts about some of the American opposition to Concorde, which masquerades under the guise of environmentalism. I am not sure whether they are sincere environmentalists. I am sure that there are those who, with total sincerity, are opposed to the environmental pollution of the atmosphere and who believe that Concorde will add to it. I respect and acknowledge the sincerity and perhaps even the strength of some of their arguments. However, I have no regard for the anti-Concorde lobby which is merely concerned with motives such as possible commercial rivalry and which for parochial reasons is trying to protect some special interest. Such lobbies have done everything in their power to talk down the Concorde project and to make people dissatisfied who are ill informed about the project.
It is for these reasons that I advocate the setting up of a Select Committee. The anti-Concorde lobby has had its own way too long. I am talking not about hon. Members who have genuine doubts, such as the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne), but about those whose motives are tainted. They have had their own way for too long. The moment has come when we must have a committee of inquiry which will have power to send for people and papers, a committee which can cross-examine not only civil servants but the contractors. We must know why costs have escalated and we must ensure that there is no further escalation to the detriment of the taxpayer and Great Britain.

Mr. Kenneth Warren: It is interesting to consider that while we have been debating Concorde today we could all have flown in a Concorde to New York and would now be on our way back. That is the mark of the achievement that we want to have in our minds as we debate the provision of large sums of money. It is of great consequence and needs to be seen in the perspective of the project's impact upon the development of technology in the Western world.
The Bill is about the methods of finance of an advanced technology project. It is a difficult project on the frontiers of science and technology. This is very much a discussion about the way in which we should control the expenditure of large sums of money. There is no question in my mind that there is a need for Ministers concerned with any project with such a long time scale as this one to examine carefully their sources of information. They must then ask themselves "Am I getting all the information which I need to be able to make a quantitative and qualitative judgment about the merits of the project and the way the money is being spent?"
Ministers, who are taken from the back benches by merit and by opportunity, find themselves in the cloisters of their Ministries, excluded from the excellent benefit of practical advice from humble hon. Members like myself, who have to face day-to-day problems in other places, the realities of working in difficult projects on the frontiers of science. I believe that all too often Ministers find themselves closeted with civil servants who, God bless them in the time of the pay freeze, do not have the necessary experience to advise their masters of the type of information they need to make judgments on projects like Concorde.
9.15 p.m.
I was always of the opinion, if I dare mention it, that the TSR2 or Concorde never would have cost any more than that which they would ultimately have cost, or in the case of Concorde would cost, but for the fact that at the very start no one got down to the basic problem of finding out how much they could cost. The hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Russell Kerr), in an excellent aside, gave a multiplication factor of five times Concorde throughout its history over the last decade. With respect, although his comment was right, I think that his calculation was wrong if, in the first instance, he had been presented with a more rational and sensible estimate of what the cost was likely to be, excluding inflation. I have always believed that a project like the TSR2 or Concorde, or anything of that type, would cost as much as that which we are debating. It is not the fault of management, as the hon. Member for Coventry, North


(Mr. Edelman)suggested, that that which we are talking about—

Mr. Russell Kerr: I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Warren: I am delighted to have got a dichotomy of opinion between two hon. Gentlemen opposite. One has only to consider the people engaged in management and technology to realise that it is not a question whether they are management or workers. The chaps who were on the laboratory bench yesterday find themselves at the management desk today. They are the same type of people. Within the technology of aerospace a man in management does not feel himself to be any different from the man on the production line, and the man on the production line knows that he is no different from the man in management. So it is no good blaming management. I suggest, without allocating responsibility at all over a decade which happily encompasses a number of Governments, that in the technique of management which the Government request of their employees—in this instance, primarily the British Aircraft Corporation and its subsidiaries and Sud Aviation on the French side—there has been inadequate management control.

Mr. Russell Kerr: As I agreed with the hon. Gentleman, will he now agree with me that none the less the supervision of certain things that the managers are about has in many instances been very lax, so that the taxpayer has been asked to pay more millions than he needs to have paid?

Mr. Warren: I could not answer that. I do not have the detailed knowledge that the hon. Gentleman obviously has. I know that this standard of cost control fought for by the customer—in this case Her Majesty's Government and the French Government—has not been of an order which would have given adequate cost control over something like Concorde on the frontiers of technology.
As an aside, I have never been able to accept that such control is not possible. There are many well proven methods of cost control of advanced technology available which, in other capacities, our colleagues have tried to press upon successive Ministers to try to

make sure that value for money was achieved in very difficult areas. It does not mean that we can avoid escalation, because we are always dealing with the problems of the unknown. It is nothing that Mr. McNamara of the United States Defence Department identified the need to quantify everything possible within sight so that qualitative judgments were reduced to a minimum. With Concorde, which is probably the largest project undertaken in this country in the last 10 years, I have never felt that that has been done.

Mr. Bishop: The hon. Member started his speech by saying how far we might have gone with Concorde, and now he is discussing cost control. Is he aware that for some of the time that we have been meeting in the House a Committee upstairs has been discussing counter-inflation measures in what is a cost control Bill? Hon. Members have been spending hours in Committee considering how the public can control the price of a tin of beans by ringing up and complaining and getting something done about it, yet in the House the Government are saying that the public, who are paying £350 million on Concorde, have no right to question how the money is being spent.

Mr. Warren: I follow the hon. Member's point about the baked beans but I cannot see the comparison between what they are doing upstairs and what we are doing down here in the way that the hon. Member has sought to illustrate. Surely we are concerned with a particular project, not with a national problem. I am merely trying to demonstrate the problem of cost control on a project of this type. It is an extraordinarily difficult problem.
Unfortunately, I was not privileged to serve on that Committee, and I therefore had no chance of questioning the Minister, but I hope that now we may be given some information about Concorde cash. If we approve the Bill, will the money granted under it be matched pound for pound by the French? Where will our cash go? Will it go first to the British manufacturers and secondly to the sub-contractors, and where are the subcontractors—in which country? The taxpayer has a right to know the answers.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) referred to


M. Servan-Schreiber and his comments about what he will do about Concorde. It is important to realise that neither Britain nor France alone can cancel the Concorde, and, whatever M. Servan-Schreiber may say, not only can he not cancel the project but he is not the boss. I always believe that the head man calls the tune. Britain and France have devoted themselves to Concorde because they think it is a good project. We must get comments like those of M. Servan-Schreiber into perspective. As for my hon. Friend saying that his constituents do not want to subscribe to Concorde, it seems like a question of sour grapes, where they are saying that because it is not stags and potatoes they do not want to know, but that where development aid is concerned they are on our side.
The whole issue of options is a load of rubbish. The important issue is whether anyone buys the aircraft. A would-be buyer may take out an option on a new car a year ahead but may never actually purchase it. With greatest respect to the British Aircraft Corporation, Sud Aviation, and the respective Governments, I believe that far too much emphasis has been put over the years on getting the options rather than on getting the sales. Pan American is a very fine airline, as it says in its advertisements. At the moment it has no money in the till and cannot afford to buy Concorde. It will not take up the option, because it cannot. It is selling that counts, and I am glad that Ross Stainton, the managing director of BOAC. has said that BOAC will be supersonic first and that it will cream off the world's first-class traffic across the Atlantic.
This is not just a matter of who buys the Concorde. It concerns the invisible exports which go with it like the sales of seats and of cargo space. I believe that BOAC and Air France, having creamed off the traffic and having seen that this will happen, will order the aircraft that Pan American has forfeited. If Pan American wants to abdicate the world scene, I say "Goodbye, and good luck to us".
One other point worth making is that if one looks at the Concorde as an item for debate we must recognise that devices like the Concorde demanding a very high investment of money have to be con-

sidered by the Government because the Government are the only source of finance. There is no option. The people who want to make the Concorde may be told by the Government to get their money elsewhere. But they cannot get it. This fact has not only been recognised by successive Governments here. It has been recognised by France and it was recognised by the American Government when they tried to design their own supersonic transport. The Government are the only source of money for a project like the Concorde. For that reason it is in this place that we discuss projects like the Concorde.

Mr. Russell Kerr: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that where public money goes, so also ought public policy to follow, especially in terms of public equity in the shares of those who will benefit from it?

Mr. Warren: That is a matter of opinion between political parties. I do not agree with that at all. I should like to be sure that we are investing in a project which will give a return to the Government through sales of the typical order demanded by the Government to invest in any project.
We are not merely investing in Concorde Mark I. We are investing in a technology of transportation which may last 20 or 30 years. Over that period we ought to get back the money.

Mr. Adley: Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that the Concorde is the first civil project which has not been funded out of defence expenditure naturally means that a great deal more attention is paid to it? Looking back, almost every major civil aircraft project has started with a military role. Had it been subject to the sort of scrutiny that the Concorde has, the Boeing 707, for instance, probably would never have been built.

Mr. Warren: My hon. Friend is right. The Boeing 707 was preceded by a device known as the KC135 which was a tanker aircraft ordered by the United States Air Force. It went into production in hundreds, and in that way the air force subsidised the 707. I am delighted to hear rumours that Boeing would very much like to collaborate with the British Aircraft Corporation in developments of


the Concorde when the United States Government can get down to the reality that no one can avoid the demand for fast transportation. It has delighted me also to know that Boeing seems to need the help of Lockheed whose design it appears to have taken aboard.
The situation here is that at last the Americans are challenged in transportation in the air. I think my hon. Friend the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping referred in another place to the fact that we had bought a ticket. We must not forfeit it. We must not confuse that which we have done with the right and proper demand made by the hon. Member for Coventry, North for accountability. But I hope that accountability is no reflection on the standard of the project, because the standard and the investment in it are completely commensurate with the safety demands of such an advanced transportation system. When the Americans were budgeting for what they wanted to put into their SST they found that they needed a good deal more money than we still believe we need to spend on the Concorde. Therefore we are discussing a purchase into world transportation to the year 2000.

Mr. Edelman: The hon. Gentleman has referred to the American SST and to Boeing. Is he aware that American congressional committees have been set up precisely to investigate the escalation of costs of the American aircraft industry and that those committees have condemned certain companies for the fact than many contractors used the occasion of the project to enrich themselves?

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Warren: I have had a certain amount of experience of exporting to North America, and I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman about the way in which the ghastly Americans will exploit every circumstance to enrich themselves. I know what the hon. Gentleman means. If they could climb aboard the SST project with Boeing, I should congratulate them on climbing the ladder, but unfortunately there could be only a cloud at the top. The ways in which the Americans do things and we do things are different. If they want to enrich themselves and can do so, that is entirely their business. I do not believe

that anyone on this side of the Atlantic whether in France or the United Kingdom, has enriched himself. My plea was that we should exploit the known means of cost control much tighter to make sure that we have value for money.

Sir F. Corfield: Does my hon. Friend agree that whatever else the Americans do, they do not have public sittings of congressional committees to go into such matters while negotiations are in progress and about matters crucial to the negotiations?

Mr. Warren: My right hon. and learned Friend is right. He has extremely deep experience in such matters and I respect him, particularly for what he was able to achieve on behalf of this country in the RB211 situation. I hope he acknowledges what I said, that in the House we are really a committee debating how to finance a project because there is no other source of finance. But I hope that both sides of the House will differentiate between what we are asked to do in the Bill and the merits of the project.
I am happy to see that the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) has returned to the Chamber. He gave us a number of statistics which are very much at variance with the facts. What really matters in a project such as Concorde is the cost of a seat-mile. I was happy to press my hon. Friend the Minister about the matter somewhere else yesterday. What matters is how much a passenger has to pay to travel. There is no question but that in half the United States transatlantic travel market there is an extraordinary demand to have the opportunity to travel by Concorde. Over and over again the demand is shown. That is why BOAC and Air France will succeed.
It is not true that, as the hon. Gentleman said, Concorde's range is only half what was projected or that productivity is only 50 per cent. It is double that of a Boeing 707 and more than equal to that of a Boeing 747. It is not true that Concorde is a loss-leader. It is the beginning of a new scale of technology, and we in the House should recognise it as a point at which we go forward.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: The hon. Gentleman's assertions that what I said was untrue disprove nothing. I assert what


I say to be correct, and he asserts the contrary. My assertion has equal value.

Mr. Warren: I am working on published figures—

Mr. Jenkins: So am I.

Mr. Warren: —which have been challenged by competent technical authorities in the world and not found wanting. It cannot be challenged that Concorde has the productivity of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. That is very important, because that is how the profit is made, the return on the investment.
This is a time when we should have confidence in the men who gave us Concorde. The House should have confidence in the design offices and the production lines. I hope we shall give them our trust, because Concorde means employment and pleasure to many of our people. It is time we said that we are with them.

Mr. Dan Jones: I should very much like the Minister to accept the clause. If he cannot, will he tell us that he at least accepts its spirit?
There are those who are anti-Concorde for purely selfish reasons. As a consequence I ask the Minister not to give these people additional ammunition, and to think seriously about this matter.
I do not intend to make any kind of partisan contribution since both major parties are inextricably bound up in this. I repeat that this Anglo-French plane is an outstanding technical success. It is also one of the safest in the world.
Many Members have spoken about cost. For many years I worked in this industry, with research, in the toolroom, with those people who took these planes right through from design to the drawing board and through the toolroom on to the production floor.
If any hon. Member of the House cares to make a fair analysis of what has happened with Concorde, let him examine what happened through all the war years relative to the MAP and the projects that went before it: not one quotation was ever worked to successfully.
It is almost impossible to work to given quotations in the aircraft industry. This is no fault of the management, the technical staff or the men. I have seen tool-

makers on the shop floor virtually crying because, in spite of the months they have devoted to it, a major assembly jig has not worked out.
It is not playing the game for hon. Members with but a superficial knowledge of this subject to cast doubt on the kind of people who through the years have made a vital contribution to the industrial well-being of our nation.
The former leader of the Liberal Party tried to dismiss Concorde as "an expensive toy". Had the former Leader of the Liberal Party shared my experiences from 1940–45, he would realise the tremendous work that Rolls-Royce did at that time on the engine that was the means of this country preserving its freedom. Let us never forget that the people who went up would never have done so successfully without that kind of expertise. Anybody can examine the records. These people during the '30s achieved virtually no profit return at all but ploughed it all back into research and development. In terms of fair play, if nothing else, let us accord them the merit they deserve.
The so-called environmentalists are prepared to say in defence of their arguments that the commercial prospects for the Concorde are doomed. They do not know. One can say the truth tonight, that, had Pan-Am not gone out, the old domino theory would not have applied. It was not that it wanted to opt out; it did not have the money to opt in, and that is the be-all and end-all of it.
We shall make a tragic mistake if we kid ourselves that this is the end of supersonic aircraft in the United States. Within the decade America will produce a supersonic aircraft and will be seeking landing rights in the United Kingdom. We shall hardly be in a position to deny it those rights. If the Government turn this project into the industrial gutter, in the years to come we shall find that we have given away our truly magnificent lead which will be exploited by our greatest enemy, our greatest competitor, who has no scruples when it comes to industrial strategy. We shall give away all the advantage that we have.
I speak as one with no pronounced constituency interest, but because I know this industry, and, knowing it, I want to encourage the Minister to look carefully at the clause and not turn this whole


business into an empty Concorde project when, given proper encouragement, it could succeed.
It is not only a question of the Americans. Anyone who has any knowledge of the aviation industry knows that the Russians already have their Concordski, and nobody will deny that, apart from its civil capabilities, it has military potential. That has not so far been brought out in the debate, and I draw it to the attention of the Minister and the House. It is something about which we ought to think very seriously.
I believe that there should be public and parliamentary scrutiny of the financing of this project so that we can see that financial and economic justice is done. I have kept my contribution short because the debate has continued for some time and I know that the Minister is impatient to reply. I want to hear what he has to say. I hope the whole House agrees that we must scrutinise the spending of further public money on this brilliant project, but I hope that nothing will be said to cast doubt and suspicion on those who have been involved in the manufacture of this aircraft and have had the opportunity of being at Toulouse where there is a highly efficient organisation. Let us carry on with this project and ensure that what is today an undoubted technical success becomes in a few year's time an equally commercial success.

Mr. Joseph Harper: I join my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones) in asking the Minister to have a fresh look at the clause. We did not vote against the Bill on Second Reading. We put down a reasoned amendment relating to the setting up of a Select Committee, but that was turned down by the House. In Committee we debated a similar amendment and today we have debated the issue fairly exhaustively.
I get the feeling that the Government regard Select Committees—or the proposed one anyway—as anathema. The view seems to be that if the Minister were to accept the clause, on Monday morning the Patronage Secretary would declare to the House that a Select Committee was being set up to consider the Concorde Aircraft Bill and would name the Members to serve on it. But that

is not so. The amendment does not say that.
The amendment is lucid and clear. It says:
If at any time the additional expenditure sanctioned under section 1 of this Act exceeds £300 million a Select Committee…shall be appointed to inquire into the generality of the Concorde project, the expenditure and Parliamentary control and scrutiny thereof.
So, although £370 million of good English money—

Mr. Dan Jones: British money.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. Harper: —United Kingdom money has been spent on this project, another £300 million is to be spent before a Select Committee can be set up.
I hope that the Minister will have a fresh look at that. In matters such as the Concorde project in which vast sums are involved, there is a paramount need for and obligation on the Government to supply information. This they have not done. What information we have had has been sparingly supplied only after hon. Members on both sides of the House have asked questions. For example the Minister, in replying to a debate on a similar amendment on 19th December 1972, said:
We are talking today about another £125 million."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee D, 19th December 1972; c. 13.]
The hon. Gentleman said that with much smug complacency because earlier the sum of £350 million had been bandied about in Committee. He appeared to think that because the amount would be £125 million, that was all right. One got the impression that this was chicken-feed and it did not matter much because the amount fell short of the amount about which everyone had been speaking.
I emphasise the point about setting up a Select Committee. The Minister said that the £125 million would be in loans, as if that could make any difference. It is public money, and if the project does not succeed we shall not get our money back. That is another reason why we should have a Select Committee. The Minister appeared to be of the opinion that to set up a Select Committee would be superfluous. We think it vitally important that the country should know how public money is spent and continues to be spent. Only by making this information


available can people decide whether Concorde is a good investment and whether we should persevere with the project.
Of the £750 million, £370 million was our money. That is a lot of money by any calculation. If we are not in receipt of proper information, the result could be tantamount to throwing good money after bad. I am not personally of the opinion that we are doing so. I differ somewhat from the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) who played a vital part in the proceedings of the Standing Committee. I am sorry that the American airlines have decided not to follow up their options by placing firm orders for the aircraft. It may be that other airlines will follow suit.
It puzzled me when my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins), who is very knowledgeable in these matters, called Concorde a "loss leader". I understand that loss leaders are employed when a vendor has a wide variety of goods; to encourage customers to come into his shop, he gives prominence to something which he deliberately offers for sale at a loss. The theory is that once the customer gets inside the shop, he will buy other goods as well. But I do not know that that is an apt analogy for the Concorde.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I said that it had been argued and that Concorde salesmen were attempting to suggest that Concorde, if added to an airline fleet, would give it prestige and that this fulfilled the function of a loss leader. I do not believe it. I do not think it works that way at all. I do not think that the Concorde problem can be solved that way or any other way.

Mr. Harper: I am wiser now. Apparently my hon. Friend and I are on the same wavelength, which seems strange because he is anti-Concorde and I am pro-Concorde.
Another figure elicited from the Minister in Standing Committee was that 23,700 people work on Concorde on this side of the Channel, spread over 200 firms throughout the country. Thus, many hon. Members quite unknowingly are involved. In Bristol many thousands of people work on the Concorde, but the work as a whole covers a wide range of products, services, advanced techniques, plastics—which brings in my constituency—steel bearings,

plant, equipment and many skills of management at all levels. If we can sell this aircraft and make a success of it, it will bring new work and a lot of hope for everybody.
My constituency, situated in mid-Yorkshire, must have its share of the project, although to a layman most of the work is unrecognised for what it is. Yet it is there. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us more about it tonight.
We are going through a prices and incomes policy phase, known as the "counter-inflation temporary provisions" phase. We are in phase 1, soon we shall have phase 2, and we are to have phase 3, and no doubt phase 4 in about 1980 —that is, if the present lot stay in power. This policy is applied everywhere, but not to the Concorde. The housewives in the supermarkets, the ordinary markets and the shop on the corner, turning every little penny—and it is little now—trying to make it go as far as possible, do not realise that successive Governments have taken £370 million in effect from their purses. Yet the Minister challenges our right to ask why this was, in effect suggesting that we are being cheeky, and have no right to ask such things.
The main reason behind our request for a Select Committee was that we should be able to satisfy the public that at the end of the day we shall have an aircraft efficient in every respect and based on strict financial security. I know that this does not always happen. In Standing Committee the hon. Member for Oswestry quoted from the Sixth Report of the Public Expenditure Committee. I remind the House what the Expenditure Committee said:
It is our view that there has been inadequate Parliamentary control and too little information publicly given.'
In its indictment of Government policy—the policy of successive Governments—the Expenditure Committee went on to say that with a project of this size
there should have been, and should now be, an annual White Paper.
That is what we are now advocating.
One of the main features of this whole affair is that we are producing an aircraft without a corresponding market. The recent decisions in the United States have caused great concern in this country, and this makes it all the more imperative


that the public should be in full possession of all the facts. If when we start a project like Concorde, costing £1,000 million or more, anyone thinks that we shall get all the development costs back over a period of years during the life of the aircraft he is not "with it". It cannot be done on a project such as this.
It was not done when too much public money was spent in trying to gain experience in nuclear engineering in the form of Magnox stations. Those millions did not come back, and we did not expect them back. We shall need nuclear energy in the future. Coal has a long life but natural gas and oil have not, so we must have nuclear energy, and the vast amount spent was an investment for the future.
My argument is that the amount we are spending is out of proportion to the benefits that will accrue. I am pro-Concorde. We have spent the money and we must sell the damned thing. If we do not sell it, all that money will have been spent to no avail.

Mr. John Biffen: I apologise to the Minister and to the House for not having been here earlier. As I am sure my right hon. Friend will understand, it is because I have been doing service in Standing Committee H on the Counter-Inflation Bill, which may be somewhat bizarre when taken alongside what is proposed in connection with Concorde, but such are our obligations.
I feel some proprietorial claim on the debate, because the clause before the House reads:
'If at any time the additional expenditure sanctioned under section 1 of this Act exceeds £300 million a Select Committee of the House of Commons shall be appointed to inquire into the generality of the Concorde project, the expenditure and Parliamentary control and scrutiny thereof'.
We should not be having this debate had I not voted the way I did in Committee. I hope, therefore, that I shall be acquitted of discourtesy and permitted a proprietorial presence.
I have not had an opportunity to hear much of the debate, but I was intrigued by what was said by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones). Last night I had an evening off from feminism and went to see the film "The Ruling

Classes" at the Odeon in Kensington. It was a useful therapy because everything redolent of the speech of the hon. Member for Burnley could have come from the cast in that film. We had talk about "fair play", "playing the game" and "our greatest enemy".
I was not clear who was our greatest enemy in the context of the hon. Gentleman's speech. I thought it was the Soviet supersonic airlines but now I understand it was the Americans. In certain circumstances of developed patriotism and xenophobia there are those in this country who would like to take on simultaneously the United States and the Soviet Union. Although the hon. Member for Burnley is in a sense the spiritual successor of the Earl of Cardigan, wanting to send us all in on the charge of the Light Brigade, this topic is of such substance that it deserves more detached consideration.
Like the hon. Gentleman. I have no constituency interest in this project. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping has had the most tortuous and tremendous problems in the project that he inherited. No one could have devoted himself with more skill and panache to making a success of it. None the less, we are where we are. We are at a point where we were not at the conclusion of the Standing Committee proceedings. The Pan American options have lapsed and there have been other consequential decisions. The House is entitled to inquire of my hon. Friend what will be the consequences, inasmuch as they are assessable by the Government.
We all know who will have to pick up the checks if things go awry. It will be our taxpayers. Although there may be a fair number of constituencies which have among their electorate manufacturers of either the Concorde or its components, I guarantee that 100 per cent. of the constituencies will provide those who have to finance the losses, if loss-making this project be.
The first question I wish to ask my hon. Friend is directly related to the speech of the hon. Member for Burnley—

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Orders of the Day — BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That Government Business may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. John Stradling Thomas.]

Orders of the Day — CONCORDE AIRCRAFT BILL

Question again proposed, That the Clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Biffen: After that brief "commercial", may I now return to the pertinent point raised by the ever-hopeful hon. Member for Burnley of the military significance of Concorde. He said that he has delved into the tortuous history of the project. He will have reflected that when the original announcement was made to the House there were references to the military potential of this aircraft. The point was raised during the Standing Committee proceedings on the Bill. I should like my hon. Friend the Minister to assure the hon. Member for Burnley that there are no tangible or visible military prospects for this aircraft

Mr. Dan Jones: I do not want to flog these points but there have been so many references to the hon. Member for Burnley that I am rapidly getting the impression that I am responsible for this debate. I direct to the hon. Member the observation that the hon. Member for Burnley never attacks or casts doubt upon people who have no chance of answering for themselves.

Mr. Biffen: As far as I know, that extremely pertinent and laudable parliamentary convention which is adopted by the hon. Member for Burnley is also adopted by the hon. Member for Oswestry, which is why he conducted his remarks primarily in terms of speeches he has heard rather than of speeches of which he has been told; and for reasons which I have already explained, I could not be present earlier in the debate. I came in when the hon. Gentleman was speaking and I have done him the courtesy of trying to take up points he mentioned in his speech.
We had better get it right once and for all. Is there a military potential to this aircraft? If there is not, do not let

us delude ourselves into further expenditure upon the pursuit of an objective that we cannot realise in this respect. That is the main point I am making.
My second point is that since the cancellation of the Pan American option there has, naturally enough, been a fair degree of speculation upon what is the commercial potential of the project; and our attention has been directed to airlines that have never got into the option queue at all, namely, Latin American airlines of one sort and another. I should be immensely grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister, in answering this debate on the clause and the amendments, could indicate what commercial assessment has been made of the Latin American market.
Before Pan-Am cancelled its option, was that option likely to be exercised purely in relation to the North Atlantic route or was Pan-Am, being a global flight carrier, also considering Pacific routes and Latin American countries? I know not, but it is a pertinent point if we are now being told that there is a possibility of sales to more affluent Latin American flight carriers than Pan American. I ask the question without any hostility and purely out of curiosity.
I come to the point made so eloquently by the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Harper)—he has made up on Report stage for all the speeches we missed from him in Committee—that if we move to a situation where production of Concorde is somewhat less than originally envisaged but none the less it still proceeds, how do we phase production at a lower level of output? How is this to be contrived having, as we must, a certain regard for economy? How do we balance out matters in respect of commitments which we and France have undertaken?
These are difficult questions for my hon. Friend the Minister to answer at this point in time, but we would be doing less than our duty if we did not recognise that there must ultimately come some point when the present pattern of production, divided between this country and France, between Bristol and Toulouse, may have to be recast. That may be one of the unpalatable consequences of the present market situation, because it is the market situation which will determine levels of production.
Do not let us imagine that we shall produce these aircraft merely for their static bewilderment and splendour, and for them to be included as part of the statuary in the Wedgwood Benn Garden of Technology in Basildon New Town, or wherever it may be. We are in this business only to produce aircraft which will fly and carry passengers. So if the market is diminishing we must consider not merely the consequences at the point of production but the consequences for the United Kingdom civil aviation industry. This is where all the other projects, such as the HS146, begin to take on

enhanced significance. They cannot he considered totally unrelated to the consequences of a diminished production line for Concorde. These are the implied realities of the order book situation as we now understand it, and the situation will remain as it is unless it is transformed by orders from airlines which at the moment do not appear on the option list.
I hope that my modest contribution, tardy though it is, will enable the Minister to clear up these ambiguities so as to reassure me and those who watch cur proceedings from the sidelines.

Mr. Elystan Morgan: I rise to make a brief constitutional point, and I hope that it will be none the worse for that. Although Edmund Burke and other distinguished Bristolians over the generations have reminded us that we should take a broad view of matters in this House, there must be a balance between that consideration and the trust which reposes in each and every one of us to be at all times an advocate for his own constituency. Whatever the general case must be, and I accept it, it is right and proper to mention a constituency aspect.
I have no doubt about the general case, but the future development of this aircraft is such in its voracity for public funds as virtually to exhaust the purse of Fortunatus. I have no doubt that the open-ended commitment to which the British Government tied us 10 years ago in respect of this aircraft is of such magnitude as to make the Danegeld appear as if it were a twopenny contribution to a good charitable cause.
I had the impertinence a few days ago to suggest that it would be right and proper for Her Majesty's Government to published a White Paper which would spell out the liabilities that would accrue for us if we were to cancel this project unilaterally. That suggestion, perhaps expectedly so, was pre-emptorily rejected by right hon. Gentlemen opposite, but I see nothing wrong in it. If the House is to be in a position to judge whether this project should be abandoned or not, surely that is the most relevant piece of information it could possibly have.
Of course, there are the jobs of 20,000 persons directly involved here, and perhaps tens of thousands more, and it is a perfectly proper and necessary constituency point for any one of the scores of hon. Members whose constituencies are so affected to make in this House, and they would be failing in their duty if they did not make it. All these matters, however, have to be considered as part of the totality of considerations.
My own constituency point is that we in Cardiganshire have of late been enjoying, if that is the word, a "boom" period. We have probably had more sonic booms in our own constituency

than has any other part of the United Kingdom over the past 10 years. When the Government decided some four or five years ago that this particular form of nuisance should be exhibited in a dramatic and presentational way to the country as a whole there were tens of thousands of objections. But these things have been occurring in Cardiganshire over the years, and it is not just the booms of supersonic aircraft which affect us but the pente-costal shriek on the sudden appearance of an aircraft flying at 150–200 feet. That happens scores of times in a single week.
I make this plea, therefore. A short time ago the Government came to the conclusion that the western route was marginally preferable to the eastern route for Concorde testing. Geographically, there does not appear to have been very much in it. In either case a fairly straight course of 500–600 miles could have been found. Marginally, the argument appears to have been decided in favour of the western route. In that respect I suspect that certain very strong French considerations were brought into the equation. There was a danger that the force de frappe might be interfered with or that aircraft coming from Orly or Le Bourget might in some way be inconvenienced. I am guessing that that was the consideration, but I may be wrong.

Mr. Benn: What my hon. Friend says, in fact, misrepresents the position. There were two alternative routes. The decisive factors were the helicopter air-sea rescue in case anything happened during the test run that might affect the pilot, and the precision of the calibration of instruments. The consideration he has mentioned had no part whatsoever to play in that decision. I recognise his constituency interest but I am certain he would not wish to leave a false impression.

Mr. Morgan: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that explanation but I am sure he will recognise that there was no question of total absence of helicopter cover on the eastern route, so it was in any event a fairly marginal consideration in that respect.
Together with all the massive financial considerations, one should in a Select


Committee at the same time weigh these other questions of interference with amenity in an area which, unhappily, over the past 10 years has seen more interference, probably, than any other constituency in the British Isles.

10.15 p.m.

Mr. Michael Heseltine: Having listened to this debate virtually without interruption since the start of it many hours ago, I can say that if ever there was a more convincing argument for not having a Select Committee on the Concorde programme at this time we have had it today. Everyone understands that over 11 years we have developed a remarkable aircraft, with considerable technological achievements. We are now in a situation when many of our fellow citizens are doing all in their power to sell this aircraft to airlines across the world. It is a very difficult thing to sell aeroplanes at the best of times. It is particularly difficult to sell new technology aeroplanes.
The effect upon the salesmen involved in that situation of the sort of carping criticisms which are raised by hon. Members opposite as a background to the efforts that have to be made must produce one of the most demoralising situations imaginable. If that is the beginning of what a Select Committee might do at a crucial time in the programme, I am more convinced than ever that a Select Committee would not at this time add anything to our knowledge of the Concorde programme.
Let me give some examples of the sort of things we have heard. We have heard the hon. Members for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) and Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) saying that there is waste on the shop floor, with the implication that the management is no good and the men are perfectly all right—all the old traditional divisions one would expect from hon. Members opposite. One can imagine the effect upon the companies concerned of these innuendoes. Was there one single example to substantiate these innuendoes? Not one. It was just the old attempt to drive divisions between the companies involved in producing this aircraft.
We are asked time and again for more information on a whole range—of what?

Was I asked a range of specific questions on which information was not available? Was I told where I could have said more and on what occasion? Have any hon. Members opposite read the 1¾-hour speech I made in Committee, answering question after question, giving probably more information than any Minister has ever given in one speech on the Concorde programme? Has any hon. Member opposite read this week's Flight dealing with the report of Sir David Pitblado, the Comptroller and Auditor-General, which sets out in enormous detail many of the matters on which more information was being sought? If they had done so, how can they go on saying that the House has not been given information on Concorde.
The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) referred to this as a rich man's toy, as though that was some way of helping in the efforts being made by those responsible for selling this project, as though that in some way describes the remarkable pressures that exist on all of those who have to travel professionally across the world for business, administrative or political reasons and to whom a vehicle of this sort has enormous virtue.
Then we had all the old environmental arguments produced once again by the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins)—not because he seeks information but because he is a dedicated opponent of this project. I do not mind that at all. I have always respected the rights of people who opposed this project in any way, if that is what they want. I believe that if the hon. Member was on this Select Committee he would not be there to obtain more information. That would be completely to misunderstand his purpose in being on that Committee.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: The hon. Member cannot destroy the idea of a Select Committee merely by suggesting that it would not be a good one if I were a member. He is making absolutely certain that we on this side vote for the clause. That is his achievement.

Mr. Heseltine: We shall see what hon. and right hon. Gentlemen want to vote for when the time comes. From 1964 to 1970 hon. Gentlemen opposite were making exactly the same decisions as I have


to make. They had the same information as is available to me in making the same assessments. They acted in precisely the way that I have acted except that I have given more information.
The reasons are clear. I will start with the speech of the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn), who feels that there is no reason why all these arguments about secrecy should now be allowed to stand. That was not his view when he was the responsible Minister, but it is easy in opposition to change one's mind and say that if one gets back into Government one will behave in a totally different way. Let us look at the three reasons why it would be wrong to breach the procedure which he and I and all other Ministers responsible for this situation have followed.
Let us take the basic issue of the selling price. Is it wise in commercial aircraft sales to reveal the price at which we are prepared to negotiate with one airline or another? Should we break down the price so that every airline knows the terms that we are offering to other airlines? It is arguable that if every hon. Member knows what the price is, so will all the airlines. They will immediately take the best part of every package that is offered to any airline and make a composite package. They will say "That is the point at which we start to negotiate".
No commercial aerospace manufacturer dealing in this situation should be subjected to that degree of pressure. It is for that reason that the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East who was responsible for the taxpayers' money and all the companies responsible for selling Concorde, did not reveal that information. Nor will I—for the same reason.
There is an element in the Government levy of recouping the taxpayers' money for research and development in each price quoted, which neither this Government nor the last Government revealed. Why not? That is because every airline would have said "That is not part of the production cost. That is not something the manufacturers are concerned with. That is what the Government have in it. The Government will not stand up to commercial pressure, so we will take that off to start with".

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman is making a vigorous speech. However, he

will know that neither the selling price nor the levy was fixed before the change of Government. Both matters were under discussion at the time of the change of Government.

Mr. Heseltine: The sort of arguments which were put to the right hon. Gentleman were precisely along the line of trying to persuade him to name the figure for the development of Concorde. The right hon. Gentleman, for reasons which I believe, did not give the information for which he was asked.
I am giving examples in the three areas in which I might be asked and, indeed, I am continually asked, for information. I will not give it. To do so would be to prejudice the greater interests of this country, which has invested £500 million in the project.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Adley) dealt with the third area extremely well. He said that the problem about the Concorde options is that they were signed art some time in the middle 1960s and became markers on which everybody focused, watched and waited. My hon. Friend suggested that at the moment an option goes everybody regards it as a major tragedy. They may be extremely sad events, but they have become such significant elements in the Concorde programme that they have fixed public opinion on the options.
That is not a problem which one would normally expect to find in the sale of aircraft. One is not normally dealing with the long lead time which is involved in the Concorde programme. My hon. Friend is right; the signing of the options probably was not helpful to the programme. We could not have known that at the time, but probably it was not helpful. The fact is that every time a forecast is made, public opinion fixes upon it. If it happens to be wrong, the alarms build up, the danger signals build up and a background of doubt and uncertainty is well established long before any decision is reached one way or the other.
That is a very difficult background against which to sell. The House must fully understand that if we are involved in high technology programmes with all the difficulties associated with them, the


uncertainties and long lead times, hon. Members will have difficulty in reconciling their legitimate interests with the commercial interests of the companies involved.
There are real areas where it would not be in the interests of the project to reveal the figures of the sort I have been describing. That has been the view of every Minister in the past who has been in the position in which I find myself. I can see no reason to change that view. I do not believe for one moment that if the Opposition returned to power they would move from that situation in the reality of office.

Mr. Palmer: Mr. Palmer indicated dissent.

Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Member for Bristol, Central shakes his head. I should be interested to see what he would do if he were in my shoes.

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman is not doing justice to his case. To start with, he attacks the ideas of the options. Does he believe that any Government would have felt able to go ahead with this expenditure if the options had not been published and known?
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman said that the Opposition would support his view. It was the Opposition, when in power, who set up the Select Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) pioneered the interrogation of Ministers on matters which had previously been secret and, by publishing Green Papers, opened up for public discussion issues which had hitherto been made public only when the Government had reached a view.

Mr. Heseltine: The right hon. Gentleman is fully aware that the options came in large measure after the start of the Concorde project. He referred to it as starting in the 1950s, but the treaty was signed in 1962, and most of the options came in the mid-1960s.
Let us consider how much information the right hon. Gentleman was prepared to reveal. On Second Reading we discovered that the right hon. Gentleman had negotiated with his French opposite number, M. Chamant, an agreement whereby either Government could terminate the project. Did we discover this when the

agreement was negotiated? Did the right hon. Gentleman come to the House and say "The options are open. We can reconsider the project. It is open to either Government to cancel within the terms of the agreement that I have negotiated"? He did not. When did we discover the existence of the agreement? We discovered it on Second Reading of this Bill. That was the first time that the information was made available to the House. If that is the kind of secrecy which the right hon. Gentleman believes he can use when in Government, how has he the effrontery now to say that the Conservative Party is behaving in some quite different way?

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman might also add that his party signed a secret treaty with the French which was never revealed to the House, and only became known to the incoming Government in 1964, which provided for no break clause whatsoever. The Labour Government restored a degree of freedom of action which, as far as the House was concerned, was always present because the previous Government had never revealed that they had signed a secret treaty.

Mr. Heseltine: Why is it so wrong for my party in 1962 to have signed a secret treaty which was not revealed to the House when the right hon. Gentleman negotiated a treaty of even larger significance in 1968 which he did not reveal that to the House?

Mr. Benn: We restored freedom of action.

Mr. Heseltine: The right hon. Gentleman, from a sedentary position, says that they restored freedom of action. Why did he not tell the House so that it could decide the freedom of action? It was freedom of action to the Government, not to the House of Commons, that the Labour Government restored, and they did not let the House know that they had this freedom of action back.
Let us be quite clear so that no one has any doubts. Before the Labour Party lost the last General Election the freedom of action under the right hon. Gentleman's treaty had already been lost because the parameters within the treaty had been passed. Therefore, the freedom of action existed for the Labour


Government but not for the Conservative Government.

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman is wrong again. We agreed with the French that we would set parameters to permit a genuine review of the project. At the first review, when the parameters were reached both sides agreed to go on. The same freedom of action exists for this Government which they would not have had if we had not negotiated this with the French.

Mr. Heseltine: That is not so. The parameters provided that at a fixed point of research and development commitment a review could take place. That fixed point was passed before the Labour Government left office and, since it has been passed, it is not possible for us to rely on the treaty negotiated by the right hon. Gentleman, because it is no longer capable of being used. Therefore, the freedom of action is not available to this Government as it was to the Labour Government, though that was not revealed to the House at the time.
Having revealed the dilemma in which Ministers find themselves, within which they have always been prepared to accept they were right to remain, I will go on to reply to some of the points raised in the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) asked how long the £250 million will last. Our judgment is that it will be sufficient, taking into account contingencies, including inflation, to run through 1975–76, after which we believe that, on all the calculations that we can make, the programme, allowing for the revenue from airlines which purchase the aircraft, will become increasingly self-financing.
I am sure that the whole House understands that we run up to this order of expenditure only if we produce the aircraft on a considerable scale. If we do not produce the aircraft, we do not need to lend the money to the manufacturers to finance their production. The calculations we make indicate that we have sufficient funds. If we wish to raise the amount by the additional £100 million provided for in the Bill we have to do so by affirmative resolution. My hon. Friend asked whether the Public Accounts Committee was to examine the

project, and I believe the answer is "Yes". It has already done so on four previous occasions and very detailed information is available.
10.30 p.m.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Sir F. Corfield) raised the question of the relationship between production and sales, and my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen), who raised the matter in Committee, return to it tonight. It is difficult to judge in any sphere of production or commerce to what extent there should be an inventory and how far ahead of the market production should proceed. It is a judgment for which there are no rules. A decision must be reached in the light of the available facts and figures. But there must be a relationship between sales and production. That is not to say that production must slavishly follow order after order, but there must be an assessment based upon the sales position, and matters cannot be conducted in any other way.

Mr. Benn: The Minister said a moment ago that the parameters that we discussed with the French in 1968 as the basis for a joint review had been overtaken by escalation and the passage of time, and that is obviously true. Is he telling the House that he now has no agreed criteria with the French for reviewing the project and that the position is as his Government left it in 1964, because that is a very important statement?

Mr. Heseltine: That is precisely the position the right hon. Gentleman left us with when we came into power in 1970.

Mr. Benn: The Minister cannot get away with that, because we negotiated parameters with the French in spite of the treaty. If he says that the parameters were exceeded by 1969–70, he is correct. Has he made any attempt to do what we did and agree a rational system of criteria with the French so that both Governments can sit down and see how the project compares with the criteria that have been set? Has anything been done since 1970 on that?

Mr. Heseltine: The right hon. Gentleman made an arrangement with the French under which the project could be


cancelled. The purpose of that presumably was that the right hon. Gentleman thought it possible that he would want to cancel. This Government, having come to office in 1970, examined the project and decided to give it every support. In those circumstances I can confirm that we have not negotiated with the French conditions upon which some subsequent cancellation could take place. Our whole emphasis has been on supporting the project.

Mr. Benn: The Minister had better get this right. It is an important point. We negotiated criteria with the French which allowed us to review the project, and, having reviewed it, we decided to continue with it. The Minister is now telling the House that he has no criteria upon which to base negotiation and discussion with the French. He is, therefore, back in the position of 1962 where, without criteria, he is simply going forward on a treaty basis. If that is the case, perhaps he will confirm it.

Mr. Heseltine: I have made the position clear. The right hon. Member has used a euphemism in saying that he could review—review for the purpose of possible cancellation. That was the arrangement he made with the French. When we came to office, the options already having been closed because the parameters had been passed before the Government were elected, we decided to go on with the project. I say in fairness to the right hon. Gentleman that by that time it was easier to see the likely final element of costs because we were closer to the certificate of air-worthiness position; nevertheless we have not sought to go back to the French and say "You had arrangements to review with a view to cancellation with the Labour Government. Those arrangements have been overtaken by events. We need a new set of criteria". Our purpose was to commit the Government to making a success of the project in the light of all the evidence available to us, and we did not, therefore, seek to renew the arrangements which would have enabled the Labour Government to cancel. It is true that they did not cancel in the event. That is the precise position as I understand it.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Angus asked about options. He

quoted a large number of dates upon which different figures for options had been given. There is nothing about this information which is not readily available to the House. But it probably would not be helpful to read out rows and rows of figures showing the changes on the different dates. I shall compile the make-up of all the lists and let my hon. Friend have them, but I assure him that all the information is available and is simply a sequence of events where some options have disappeared as airlines have decided not to take them up. If the House wishes me to do so, I can give a list of the options existing tonight—

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: The only point that we wish to get clear is whether the outstanding options of Air France and British Airways have disappeared.

Mr. Heseltine: They are not on the lists. I confirmed that when my hon. Friend was speaking.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: There is one other point which is rather important. It was raised by Sir George Edwards at his Press conference. It concerns the possibility of production being concentrated on one production line at Toulouse. It would be helpful if my hon. Friend could assure the House at this stage that in no circumstances could there be any possibility of the British taxpayers' funds being committed to continuing production on that basis.

Mr. Heseltine: Let me repeat what I have said outside. My hon. Friend is correct. This arose from a statement made by Sir George Edwards at a Press conference. No proposals of this kind have been made to me. At the moment, I regard it as an important part of the manufacturers' responsibilities to look at all the options as they see them. Having done that, it is for them to tell me what they think. It would be unthinkable for me to give them directives about what they should do. It is up to them to analyse the situation and then to come to me. Obviously decisions would then have to be taken by the Government. But there are no proposals of this kind before me.
Several hon. Members have realised the difficulty, because it is a very short time since the Pan-American and TWA decisions. However, as soon as I have


anything further to say I shall ensure that the House is made aware of the situation. At the moment, however, I cannot do that.
I was asked whether I had anticipated the Pan-American decision and had asked in advance some of the questions which are now being asked. Although I was obviously aware that the Pan-American decision could go either way, I did not think it right to inquire of the manufacturers what they would do if the Pan-American decision went the wrong way. I can think of no act more likely to undermine the morale of the companies concerned than a message from the Minister, a month before a decision of importance to them is due to be taken, asking "What will you do if it goes the wrong way?" I would not dream of imposing a strain of that kind on the manufacturers. Obviously the manufacturers must look at the situation as they see it. As soon as there is anything that I can tell the House, I shall do so.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson), in a very powerful speech, was the first hon. Member to draw attention to the vast amount of information which is available on this subject. There have been a number of Parliamentary Questions and debates. There is the Standing Committee inquiry on this Bill. There is a whole range of newspaper comments of one kind and another. They add tip to a very detailed set of information on the project, subject only to the proviso which I made earlier.
I turn now to the point made by the hon. Member for Coventry, North about the costs involved in technological developments. Let us not try to avoid this very obvious fact. Any attempt to cost in advance a project of this kind is a very difficult exercise. It must be remembered that it is a project which no one else has ever done and that it is the second largest that the world has seen, following only the American space programme. There have obviously been a considerable number of changes during the life of the project—changes in technology and in design and specification. All the problems of inflation have distorted the situation.
We have now reached the stage where we believe that the design is much closer to being fixed. Although the development phase is not over, we can see areas where it should be possible to freeze the design specifications. In this circumstance, we are now discussing with the firms whether we can enter into fixed price contracts to try to cope with the problem of anticipating future costs. It is difficult, because there is a degree of technological development still to do, but we are trying to do that.

Mr. Palmer: I agree with all that the hon. Gentleman has said about the difficulties of this kind of advanced technology, but is he still suggesting that there is no possibility of waste, of avoidable mistakes being made? His complacency is extraordinary.

Mr. Heseltine: No one who has followed the position of any Minister responsible for the project could say that any of them has been complacent. There has been a continuing scrutiny by Parliament through the Public Accounts Committee on four separate occasions, through the Defence Department Procurement Executive and through negotiations with the companies. But it is beyond doubt that trying to develop such a project is very difficult, especially for the time scales and the technological problems ahead.
I was asked about the South African trials. They have been as successful as we hoped, but it is too early to say what the read-out from them will be. There is no reason why I should not make available any information that I feel might be helpful as soon as I have it.
We have not yet taken the noise readings of the pre-production model flying at Toulouse. It is in the early stage of its testing programme, so I cannot give further information on that.

Mr. Dan Jones: The Minister told one of his hon. Friends that he would answer the observation I made, that the Concorde has military potential.

Mr. Heseltine: Many questions have been raised, and I want to deal with as many as I can. My hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) was almost the last hon. Member to speak, so his comments are rather low in the packet, but they will come up before I finish.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings (Mr. Warren) spoke of the costs involved and the suggestion that in some way we have been wasteful in this country. The Americans spent hundreds of millions of dollars on their SST and cancelled it. Looking at the costs incurred by the Americans on developing engines and so on, whether the same sort of problem exists, though not to the same degree, we realise that this kind of high technology involves large expenditure.

Mr. Warren: I am sorry that I did not make myself absolutely clear on the point. I was saying that the amount of expenditure we have found necessary was the amount of expenditure that could have been predicted to be necessary. I only want to know whether my hon. Friend accepts that there are methods of cost control which could be applicable and which should have been exploited by now, so that we have confidence that control exists.

Mr. Heseltine: I fully see that. I wonder whether my hon. Friend has read the description of how cost control methods are applied in monitoring the Concorde programme. There is detailed cost control. For example, no change involving expenditure of more than £10,000 can be made without reference to the technical experts of the Defence Department Procurement Executive.
Moreover, we are trying to negotiate a fixed price on the production side and we have negotiated profit incentives with the manufacturers to see that they have a real incentive to keep the costs down and to minimise the selling price. However, we made clear to the House at the time that in the end the British Government have to stand behind the manufacturers simply because of the total scale of the commitment.
10.45 p.m.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings asked about the cash situation. The development cash is split 50–50 between the Governments of Britain and France, and the cash in the Bill is for the production arrangements within this country. That is a matter for the British Government. The French have made arrangements with their own companies, in which we are not involved, for the production

of the Concorde there. The only exception to that is that parts manufactured outside this country and bought in by British manufacturers will be covered by the production finance.
Last, but not least, I come to my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry. I confirm, as I did in Committee, that I know of no military application for Concorde.
On the question of Latin American airlines, I am immensely reluctant to get involved again in the situation of options and naming airlines and prospects. Anyone who has been involved in a sales campaign realises that the last thing that one does is to publish a list of prospects. That puts the prospects off. I do not think that I shall go down that track again. That is the duty of the manufacturers, and I believe that they are exploiting the opportunities.

Mr. Biffen: I appreciate the point that my hon. Friend has made, and I cavil not at his reply, but is he able to say whether the Pan-Am options were purely in respect of the North Atlantic route, or whether they covered other routes too?

Mr. Heseltine: That is a matter for Pan-Am. I do not know the answer, but I imagine that they were not restricted to the North Atlantic because of the numbers on which they had options. I do not know the answer, particularly as Pan-Am placed the options before it knew its present route patterns.
My hon. Friend's third question was about production being less than originally expected. I think that I have dealt with that in the reference to Sir George Edwards' review that is being carried out.
I hope that I have answered as many of the questions as I can in the time that we have. I am the first to agree that this is an immensely large subject and that one can discuss it for many hours, but the fact is that I have tried consistently to give whatever information I could, subject to the fact that there is a responsibility on Ministers to protect anything that might seem to prejudice the project.
It is arguable—and no doubt the House will go on arguing—that the use of Select Committees should become


more widespread. The crucial aspect is the point at which a Select Committee intervenes and the sort of restrictions that it might want to impose upon itself. That is a matter which it is wrong to consider in the context of Concorde, and it is even more wrong to consider it in the context of Concorde at a time when everybody knows that all of us, on both sides of the House, have done all in our power for a long time to make a success of this project.
To make it work in the real sense of the word we have to sell the project, and we have to give every support to the salesmen who have to negotiate with airlines across the world. That is what the Government are committed to doing, and in the light of this debate and the answers that I have given I ask the House not to press the clause but to leave us to decide on sufficient funds to match the production programme that could come from a successful sales campaign.

Mr. Bishop: We have had a useful debate. I was sorry that the Minister got rather excited and a little aggressive in his opening remarks, because by so doing he proved the point that my hon. Friends and I have been making, which is that if the Government are not prepared to give the House the kind of information which it ought to have, and of which the public should be aware, hon. Members are forced to raise points which might be raised in Committee in a more responsible way with those present to answer their allegations, which would be far preferable.
It may be thought by some that we have spent a rather long time on this measure. I believe that on Second Reading, in Committee and tonight we shall have spent about 17 hours in all. This is on a Bill which involves spending £350 million more than has been spent. I think very few would say that 17 hours is too long a time to spend discussing that amount of money. Apparently the Government consider this quite adequate scrutiny for such an immense amount of money, yet on the Education (Milk) Bill 21 hours were spent for an alleged saving of £13 million a year and 29 hours were spent on the Museums and Galleries Bill for obtaining an estimated £1·6 million. That is the kind of Parkinson's priority of this Government.

Mr. Adley: Is the hon. Member not proving that the vast majority of hon. Members fully support the Concorde project and that we understand the reasons why the Opposition felt the need to put down these amendments? We spent far more time discussing the question of milk in schools because there was bitter party controversy, whereas this great national project has healthy all-party support. Is the hon. Member suggesting that if a Select Committee was set up and there was full scrutiny, the unions would care to subject themselves to time and motion studies? How deeply does he want to go into this kind of cost estimation?

Mr. Bishop: I am not sure what point the hon. Member is making. Most people realise that if one asks for an immense amount of money, Parliament has to have accountability and stewardship and show how the spending is being monitored.
When he began his remarks, the Minister made allegations. I think most of us would not doubt the skills and ability of those concerned with Concorde. We are not the "knockers"; the knockers are those who refuse the right of others to know what is going on. The Richard Wiggs of this world make headway only because there is no one to answer their allegations and thereby damage is done. In Standing Committee my hon. Friends and I asked questions and there were no answers. There is not time now to go into a repetition of those questions. I spoke for over an hour at the first sitting and my hon. Friends spoke at great length. We were not filibustering but asking questions to which we wanted answers which we have not been given.
If the Minister is not prepared to give the facts in this open session, the case for a Select Committee is well made and is underlined. The Minister said that he regretted some of the questions my hon. Friends have asked. If he deplores that Members of Parliament have a right to ask for accountability for money taken from our constituents as taxpayers, that loophole is the only way in which he can gag the situation. Andrew Wilson, in a series of articles in the Observer, has made damaging allegations against the project, and in many cases they have not been answered.
I turn to the Sixth Report of the Expenditure Committee, on which the


majority of members are members of the Minister's party. There we see questions about the control of the project which are the basis of the amendments we are discussing. Paragraph 78 says:
At all times our concern has been with objectives and control. It is necessary to emphasise this because of a tendency in some quarters to equate the discussion of costs with 'knocking' Concorde. We do not accept that Parliament can abdicate its duty to scrutinise expenditure on Concorde or should mute such criticism as it may consider proper. Nor do we share the view sometimes expressed that announcements of anticipated escalations in cost were better withheld or minimised because they might have frightened Parliament into abandoning the project. We think it is right in terms of continuing safeguards for the taxpayer that facts and forecasts should be made plain at every stage. We are not persuaded that the commercial risks involved in doing so are serious enough to divert Parliament from its proper role
That is the finding of the Committee, which went to some extent into the spending on the Concorde.
It had to make the point, which also underlines the need for a Select Committee, that, with their other obligations, its members were not able to go into the question in necessary depth. In paragraph 81, the Committee said:
It is not easy to deduce from published statements how much money the Government expect to have to set aside for production losses in the future.
These are some of the questions we have been asking. Paragraph 82 of the report said:
The danger is that assumptions about production costs and sales may be as optimistic as the estimates of development costs made ten years ago. With the denial of any information about the proportion of development costs to be recovered on such sale and the assumptions made about total sales, Parliament is unable to judge for itself the risks involved in the further investment of public money.
Paragraph 83 said:
…following speculaton in the aviation press and a statement by the President of Aerospatiale, the Minister confirmed to the House that £13m. was the basis of the pricing formula. We appreciate the problems of agreed confidentiality that arise from our partnership with the French Government in this enterprise and sympathise with the difficulties that have faced British Ministers from time to time. However, Governments cannot be absolved from their duty to the House and we strongly believe that increased openness is in the public interest.

The right hon. and learned Member for Gloucestershire, South (Sir F. Corfield) will remember that, as Minister, he was asked questions when we read in the British Press reports from the French Press on the French Minister's announcement about the price of the Concorde. I asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman what the price was, and—and perhaps he was right at the time as far as the agreement went—he told me that he was unable to give us the figure without the authority of the French Minister, although we already knew the figure from the French Press. Admittedly, in a later Question the right hon. and learned Gentleman did give me the information.

Sir F. Corfield: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will accept that the only reason was that this was regarded as confidential for the reasons which my hon. Friend the Minister for Aerospace has given. Once one indicates the special terms available to certain airlines, one is pressed, and is almost unable to resist the pressure, to spread them to other airlines. The fact that this confidentiality was breached by the French Minister did not make the effort I made to safeguard the negotiating position in any way less honourable or less wise.

Mr. Bishop: I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman helps to make our point. When we have a project which has been developed by two countries, there are naturally problems and difficulties. It may well be that keeping Parliament and public informed has its own problems. But the fact remains that an attempt should be made in order to make it possible for those involved to have information.
In Standing Committee we asked many questions, and we feel we have a right to the answers. Amongst other things, we wanted to know what part of the research and development was absorbed in the production costs, and what answers there were to the noise and pollution problems—a relevant question in many parts of the world for many airlines. We wanted to know what details were available of costings of the various types.
Does the Minister really believe that a cloak of secrecy helps to allay public misgivings? Does he expect the House to accept that it has little right to know


these things? It is too much of him to expect the House, in its ignorance, blithely to say "Go ahead with production although we do not know whether anyone will want it in the end". Information has been given from time to time.
The Opposition is the party which backed the Bill on Second Reading, but we want adequate safeguards for the House and for the public. If a referendum were taken in the country, I think the vast majority of the people who have to find the money and whose future is involved from the point of manufacture would be behind the Opposition in saying "You have no right to vote this kind of money without these safeguards".
11.0 p.m.
I made the point earlier that while we have been sitting here, our hon. Friends in Standing Committee upstairs have been discussing cost control on much smaller things, and it seems paradoxical that here we are told that it is outrageous to query how this vast sum of money is being spent. The Minister reprimanded my right hon. Friend for secrecy in the later years when he was responsible at the Ministry of Technology. Does he say that my right hon. Friend was right or wrong to reveal the changes in the treaty? If he believes that my right hon. Friend should have revealed the changing situation at that time, surely he will concede that he ought to be just as frank with the House on this occasion.
It is now suggested that the Minister must not be as frank with the House as my right hon. Friend has been. [Laughter.] It is all very well to laugh about this, but there is this change in the situation, because, whereas my right hon. Friend suggests that as a result of the negotiations there was greater freedom of action, the House now gets the impression that those options are now closed. If that is so, will the hon. Gentleman say so?

Mr. Michael Heseltine: The options were closed before the last Labour Government left office.

Mr. Bishop: This makes a difference. If the minister says that we must go on with concorde because the options are closed and we cannot escape—

Mr. Heseltine: I did not say that at all.

Mr. Bishop: Will the Minister clarify the position then?

Mr. Heseltine: All I asked from the right hon. Gentleman was consistency. He negotiated something in secrecy—something which he revealed years afterwards. I asked for no revelation of the facts about options. That was something that he wanted to consider today. It is absolute hypocrisy to suggest that we should reveal to the House of Commons things which in practice the right hon. Gentleman never revealed when he had the chance.

Mr. Bishop: A few minutes ago my right hon. Friend made the point that the Labour Party wanted to review procedures, and this is the fundamental point. I recall that I made my maiden speech on 5th November 1964 in support of Concorde, as I am now in support of it, and it was during those months that the Labour Government reviewed the situation. We found a situation where the treaty did not enable us to escape. However, my right hon. Friend was concerned with reviewing the treaty from that point of view. If the Minister now says that the treaty is such, under his control, that the House has no means of getting out of it, this is a serious point. We should like to think that we are going on with Concorde because we want to do so and not because we cannot escape from the clauses. The Minister ought to be given the opportunity to clairfy the situation.

Mr. Heseltine: I made the position clear. That is why we did not go back to the French to try to renegotiate the terms.

Mr. Bishop: I presume the treaty is the same as when my right hon. Friend left office and we have parameters for variation.

Mr. Heseltine: That is absolutely right. The treaty is exactly the same and the parameters had been passed before the Labour Government left office.

Mr. Bishop: I will not pursue this point. I am prepared to do so, but I am not sure that it will be very helpful. If we are saying that we are going on with Concorde because we have no means


of getting out of an obligation—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] All right, the Minister says that we have the means of opting out if we wish.
My right hon. Friend was anxious to make sure that the parameters and criteria are being negotiated and are known by our partners on the other side of the Channel. The debate tonight might be better conducted in a Select Committee, with secrecy if necessary. As we are deprived of this facility we have to come into the open and ask questions which seemed to embarrass the Minister at the beginning of his speech.
When we started this debate we were discussing new Clause 1 and Amendments Nos. 2 and 3. The basis of all those amendments was that at the £300 million spending stage a Select Committee should be set up to tell the House the state of play. The Conservative Party, which represents big business so well in other ways, shows a lack of acumen when conducting public business in the House of Commons. Most people, having seen the spending of £300 million, would be anxious to know the state of play. They would want to know whether the Concorde project was going vertically up into the clouds with further liability to the taxpayer, or whether the spending would tail off—in which case we should be agreeably surprised. If there is no Select Committee at that stage we shall go on blindly until the money is exhausted. The Minister will come back to the House demanding more money, with secrecy.
There has been a great deal of misrepresentation by Mr. Wiggs and his anti-Concorde team. Questions have been posed and not answered. Damaging allegations have been made about the project and its prospects to which there has been no reply. The Minister may claim, properly, that he has no time to answer all these misleading allegations, but with this important project, with all the doubts about technical variations, escalations in cost and so on, the country should be given more facts and fears should be alloyed.
One cannot but be impressed by the enormous amount of paper which is distributed by the anti-Concorde team

immediately after events have occurred. We have been deluged with information. Where do the resources come from, for the costs must be high?
New Clause 1 asks the House to appoint a Select Committee when expenditure reaches the ceiling voted in the Bill. In Committee we hoped to get the Minister to agree to come to the House with an affirmative order at each stage of £50 million spending, to satisfy the House of the reasons for the next spending stage. That request has been declined, and we are relying on new Clause 1, which provides that a Select Committee shall be set up at a later stage.
This project does not concern only the British Government, our manufacturers and the British Aircraft Corporation; it involves the French Government, the French manufacturers and, indeed, the French people because of their contribution to the project. Some of the questions tabled here are also being tabled, possibly with much more frequent answers, on the other side of the Channel. We suggest that our people should have the same facilities as the French people to know what is going on.
Amendment No. 2 calls for publication of an annual White Paper, though we feel that such a procedure would not be as satisfactory as the setting up of a Select Committee. The Sixth Report of the Expenditure Committee says in paragraph 91—I remind the House that it is a Committee with a Conservative majority
Many lessons of Concorde for Government and Parliament have been spelt out over the past few years by Select Committees and others. It is our view that there has been inadequate Parliamentary control and too little information publicly given. With a project of this size, not involving military secrecy, there should have been, and should now be, at least an annual White Paper.
If we cannot have a White Paper, surely Parliament has the right to expect an annual White Paper which can be debated. We are spending vast sums of money and the public will be unaware of what is involved until the sum of money comes up for review before Parliament. We believe the case for a White Paper is fully made out.
There are technical aspects to be considered, and administrative control in the executive is provided for in the 1962


agreement. It provided for the setting up of two standing committees of officials from both countries to
supervise the progress of the work and report to the Government and propose necessary measures to ensure the carrying out of the programme.
The Concorde Direct Committee—the CDC—may be likened to a board of directors with the chairmanship alternating between the countries each year. The CDC keeps in touch with the Concorde Management Board, and the groups of officials deal with a wide range of technical matters, operational, commercial, and the rest. In the absence of a Select Committee or a White Paper, we are dependent on this group of officials to coordinate the activities between the two countries.
The Minister obviously has very great faith in the officials to carry out the job in all its technological and commercial aspects, but we have only to recall what happened over the Ferranti Bloodhound to realise the dangers of what can happen when things are found out too late. We also have in mind the setting up of Rolls-Royce (1971) Limited, which took over the situation from the original company following events with the RB211.
Here are two instances in which we feel that the House should have greater safeguards. We have today had an opportunity to examine all our misgivings, and there are misgivings outside the House as well as within it.
11.15 p.m.
A Select Committee, an annual White Paper and thorough scrutiny on both sides of the Channel would make those involved in the spending on this intricate project far more careful and efficient. I have no doubt that in the absence of these safeguards those involved, knowing of our concern, will be much more forthcoming in accountability matters. I hope the Minister will bear in mind the facts we have put before him in Committee, during Second Reading and now.
The Minister said that he had given an enormous amount of information, and that we had asked over 800 questions. He said we have the right to ask questions. I made the observation at the time, and I make it now, that the House not only has that right but it is entitled to expect answers. He will recall that

on Monday at Question Time I put supplementary questions to him about the prospects for Concorde with JAL and Qantas, the possibilities of landing rights in the United States and the possibility of a commercial agreement with the USSR on a supersonic corridor to the Far East. He rather shook me off by saying "You will have to wait until later in the week"—apparently tonight—"to get the answers."
I reiterate some of the points I made in Committee. First is the changing situation for Concorde. Many people now accept that Pan-Am's decision on Concorde was based not so much upon the commercial or technical merit of Concorde but upon the company's ability to undertake further commitments having regard to its financial position and its obligations with existing aircraft. The prospects for the future are much more hopeful. The Americans are now relieved of the obligations of the Vietnam war and have stopped the moon landing project. There is a need to find alternative work for the B-52 manufacturers, and others. This leads us to expect that the Americans will not want to harm Concorde's prospects by declaring that it has noise and pollution problems. To do so would be to undermine their efforts to pursue their own, similar, project.
The decision by Pan-Am and TWA not to take up their options means that others who want to buy, JAL and Qantas, and maybe the Chinese and others, will have the chance of getting in earlier. The prospects of an agreement with the USSR means that the world is moving towards an era of supersonic travel, with Concorde playing a real part.
I hope that as a result of the insistence of my hon. and right hon. Friends the Minister and all those involved in this project will be more forthcoming. They will know of the deep concern among members of the public and Members of this House about these matters. My hon. Friends and I do not intend to press this amendment—

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: Oh, yes.

Mr. Bishop: —and I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Mr. Jenkins: No.

Question put, that the clause be read a second time:—

The House proceeded to a Division—

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: (seated and covered): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it possible to register my support of the new Clause without putting in Tellers?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalien): There is no means of doing that beyond what the hon. Member has already done.

Question negatived.

Bill read the Third tune and passed.

Orders of the Day — ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Hawkins.]

Orders of the Day — GAS CONSUMERS' COUNCILS (CHAIRMANSHIP)

11.21 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Palmer: I shall now take the House away from Concorde to the gas industry, which unfortunately is much in the news at the moment. The present position of the gas industry is a sorry reflection upon the competence of the present administration. It is sad that an industry in which many generations of loyal workers have served has had to wait until now for a strike brought about by a purely political decision by the Government.
It is not my intention to discuss the labour relations of the gas industry, bad as they now are, but to turn to the public relations of the industry and the relations between the powerful new Gas Corporation which has been established by the Act which came into force on 1st January and the gas consumers.
The Under-Secretary of State served with me on the Standing Committee which for months looked at the Bill during the last Session. At least one Opposition amendment relevant to the consumer aspect was accepted. We were very glad that consumers' councils, instead of being called consultative councils as they had been in the past, were given a new title.

The change of name was more than a substitution of one title for another. It was intended—this was common ground in Committee—to be a plain indication of the independent consumer status of the consumers' councils.
I do not want to take too long in quoting the Under-Secretary, but in Committee he certainly said:
It is my intention and the intention of the Government to do everything possible to ensure that the consultative councils are watchdogs for the consumer. We want to ensure that they are strong and able and can carry out the kind of investigation needed to represent consumer interests which hon. Members on both sides would like to see."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. Standing Committee B. 18th April 1972; c. 689.]
I trust that the hon. Gentleman recalls those words. However, he was not prepared to concede that the consumers' councils should be free to elect their own chairmen. He stood by the system, admittedly practised by the Labour administration, of external appointment. I think that was wrong. This is particularly true of the new consumers' councils for the gas industry. No longer will the chairman of the consumers' council, as in the past, be a member of an area board, if only for the reason that there are no area boards.
The consumers' councils must now stand in an openly critical relationship on behalf of consumers with the local management of the new national Gas Corporation. The matters which it is their obligation to consider and to achieve justice upon between the executive and the consumers are tariffs, service given and individual grievances, all of which demand attention. It seems, therefore, that the chairman of a consumers' council must be not only an able person but, by background and experience, closely in touch with life as it is lived by the average householder and gas consumer.
How, in practice, are these paid appointments made? How is the considerable patronage given to the Minister by the Act exercised? There was a lot of discussion of this matter in Committee, as the hon. Gentleman knows. In fact, evidence taken by the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries was frequently called in aid. I particularly recall the evidence given to the Select


Committee by a senior lady civil servant. Her evidence, if it is right—I can recommend it as good light reading in some senses—was frank but hardly reassuring. She said that often in her past experience the board chairman was consulted as to a suitable name. I think that he should be the last individual to be consulted.
That lady, who was a very candid witness, also stated that knowing a Minister or even a Member of Parliament could help if such an appointment were required. She also explained that temperament entered into it. The person appointed must have a level head. She did not say a steady head. I do not think she meant it in that respect. The person concerned must be a fairly calm sort of individual, she thought. Her words, which I have taken from the report, were that she would not want anyone whose life was one of "continual aggression". That, I think, would rule out any Member of this House, apart from the fact that a Member of Parliament cannot serve on a consultative council. But nowhere was it suggested in the evidence given to the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries that a good qualification for the chairmanship of a gas consumers' council was a knowledge of and interest in consumer protection and presumably in the gas industry itself. The Under-Secretary, to be fair to him, gave the Standing Committee assurances that all this was in the past, that it would not be repeated and that in future relevant experience would count.
I believed the hon. Gentleman. I took his assurances at their face value—until recently, just before 1st January, which was the vesting date under the Act, when the name of the chairman of the consumers' council for the South West was announced to a startled public. Men and women of ripe experience and knowledge were brushed aside and we were told that instead there was to be appointed a retired general of marines.
The gentleman in question is General Sir Peter Hellings, who lives at Milton Combe, Devonshire—and the Under-Secretary is the Member for Honiton, Devonshire. I have never met Sir Peter. I am sure he is in his own sphere a fine man. I have simply gone by his record in Who's Who. He had a distinguished war record as a marine on land and sea.

His recreations are given as shooting, fishing and sailing, a little variation on the classic theme. It seemed to me, therefore, that if the Minister wished to break through all the obvious guidelines for relevant knowledge and experience in making such an appointment, he could not have done worse on the face of it.
The experience of a professional soldier, however distinguished and now a country gentleman, means little to my hard-pressed constituents in St. Paul's and Easton wards in Bristol, Central. I believe that many of them are far more typical of gas consumers than those who are residents of the part of Devon from which the new chairman comes. Indeed, it is whispered abroad that he was not a consumer of gas at all. He left the Services as recently as 1971. That is understandable, but it did not give him much opportunity, I should have thought, to adjust himself to civilian life.
I am not saying anything against Sir Peter personally. My objection is to the act of a Minister, who made an appointment which in Bristol has certainly given very great offence. There were excellent men and women serving on the former consultative council—now the consumers' council—who were passed over. I must mention in this respect particularly Councillor Bert Pegler, who had been vice-chairman of the old consultative council, a leader at one time of the majority Labour group on the Bristol City Council, a man much respected by all in Bristol irrespective of party. I do not blame him that as a result of this appointment he decided to resign from the consumers' council.
I have with me a list of all the appointments which have been made under the legislation, because there are now not only the usual area consultative councils but there is a national consumers' council. I do not say that any of these appointments are in principle party political. I do not think that an appointment should be looked at in that way. On the other hand, if the appointments are not intended to be party political, a fair balance of party interest should naturally result, as with a magistrates' bench. I feel that in looking at the list of appointments it is difficult to see that a proper balance of party interest has been arrived at, as I believe it should be.
The chairman of the national committee is a woman. I think that in itself is good. She is lady Macleod, the wife of a former conservative Minister. No doubt there is justification for that appointment, but it will be interesting to know how many others were considered. I say to the Minister that I know the difficulty of making appointments of this kind and how hard it is to please every-one, but I am only reinforced in the view which I and my hon. Friends put in Standing committee that ideally a democracy demands that in a proper representative system the consumers' councils of nationalised industries should elect their own chairmen. If that were done we would have as chairmen those who felt a normal corporate responsibility to the consumers' council. The allegations of favouritism, of those who have given good service being passed over and those with inexperience being brought in artificially in the way that this appointment was made in the South West, would be avoided and I greatly regret that the suggestion of election made by the Opposition during the Committee stage was not accepted.

11.35 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Peter Emery): I start by saying to the hon. Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) that on this occasion he could not have been more wrong. Perhaps he will listen to what I say because I think I can advance an argument which even he must accept as being in the best interests of the consumers in the South West, even of his constituents.
This matter, although comparatively small, is of considerable importance in two particular ways. First it concerns the men and women who are willing to act as the leaders of consumer protection who are the very epitome of the watchdog of the rights of consumers—in this instance gas consumers—and to ensure fair, proper and reasonably prompt service to the customer by a giant State monopoly.
Chairmen of consultative councils need the ability not only to lead their committees in their task, to be good chairmen, but also to have the drive, the public appeal and the understanding to win the confidence of the man in the street—or, I

hasten to say, woman, because most men leave the unpleasant task of writing or complaining about bad service or faulty workmanship to their wives to deal with at the local gas showroom. I say they have to win the confidence, because without that ordinary consumers will not believe that this body, called a consumers' council, of which they have little or no experience, can help them.
Then, secondly, the chairman must have the drive, the public appeal—yes, even the charisma—to win the publicity for the work of his committee, for the manner in which it can help, in which it can protect the consumers and for its ordinary activities, which often do not have the "sex-appeal", the schults or the carefully judged newsworthiness of a bad murder, a local robbery or even, at times, the activities of the local political parties.
I have no doubt that of the available candidates who could have been considered to fill the vacancy in the South West, Sir Peter Hellings was head and shoulders above anybody else in meeting the criteria I have set out.
What I have been trying to do since taking office is inspire new confidence into the consumers' councils and to let them see and realise the much greater emphasis that the Government wished to place on their activities and our willingness to provide extra staff, to carry out the recommendations of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries, which stressed the need to ensure their obvious independence and their separate structure in the nationalised corporations.
I am trying to encourage the sometimes unbelieving public into realising that these men and women on consultative councils are there to help them and that they have certain powers of approach and action which could ensure that the underdog is able to have a fair hearing against "them". "Them" is sometimes the faceless anonymity of bureaucratic inaction or the seemingly impenetrable jungle of being pushed off from one person to the next, and then the next, the next and the next all claiming that the matter will be attended to, but nothing happens—or what is even more frustrating, the claim from "them" that it is not their responsibility.
I do not want anyone to believe that this is the normal business approach of


gas or electricity boards to their customers. It certainly is not. But no one can sit in my office and not realise that this happens and happens more often than either I or the consumers' councils or the nationalised industries wish to see. This is why consumers' councils need strong and intrepid chairmen or chairwomen who will carry out this task. They are often people who will accept the challenge of being chairman of a consumers' council but are unable or unwilling to spare the time to be just one of 20 or 25 members of the council.

Mr. Palmer: May I ask the hon. Gentleman a very plain question? How many names did he consider?

Mr. Emery: Approximately 27.
In considering the appointment of chairmen to consumers' councils the new Gas Act made many changes but it did not change the method of appointment of the chairmen. It provides that these appointments are to be made by the Secretary of State who is not required to make the appointment from the council membership. It thus continues the method of appointment adopted when consumer machinery was first set up in the gas industry under the Gas Act 1948.
The reason why the present and previous administrations decided that in the case of these appointments selection is better than election is that often the best available candidate is not a member of the consultative council.

Mr. Palmer: He should be.

Mr. Emery: I want to stress the importance of getting the best available candidates and drawing on as wide a field as possible and not one confined to the existing council membership. Without this policy we would not now have Dame Elizabeth Ackroyd as Chairman of the South-East Electricity Consultative Council. If the appointment was made by election the field would be limited to the membership, as indeed would be the case if by statute or practice Ministers always made these appointments from within that membership.
The statutory provisions governing these appointments make clear that it was not Parliament's intention that they should be made only from the council membership. Nor has it been the prac-

tice of previous administrations to appoint only people with previous service as members of councils.
Let me hit over the head the hon. Gentleman's suggestions. I begin by analysing the facts under the previous administration. Six new appointments were made of chairmen of gas consultative councils by the Labour Government. Of these, only one was or had been a member of a gas consultative council.
I might also point out that of the two appointments which have been made since the new British Gas Corporation came into being, one has been from outside, that of Sir Peter Hellings, and one from inside. There is another invitation out and, provided that it is accepted, the hon. Gentleman will be pleased about where the person in question comes from.
I have no knowledge that the propriety of appointing these chairmen from outside the council membership was questioned by the hon. Member; nor did the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries in its report on relations with the public recommend any change in the method of appointment.
I mention what happened under the previous administration to demonstrate that the appointment of a chairman from outside the council is not a new policy by the present Government.
These criticisms would apply to all the previous appointments of outside chairmen and indeed to the policy of all previous administrations in not limiting the appointments to council members.
Chairmen are not appointed for their expertise in gas consumer affairs but for their personal qualities required for chairing, administering and leading their councils. The chairmen who have previously been appointed from outside have shown that someone without experience of council work can do the job excellently. It is no slight on the council members to say that the best candidate available may be outside its membership. Even within the council membership the field is restricted because some members could not give the time required for the chairman's job or because of age would be out of the running.
I should also like to take this opportunity, which is really the first, to relate


how I see the Director General of Fair Trading who is being created by the Fair Trading Bill, now in Committee, acting and co-operating with the consumers' councils in the gas and electricity industries and their chairmen. First let me make it clear that the director general's appointment is not intended to downgrade the activities or the authority of the consumers' councils but rather to strengthen and extend the work that they will be able to achieve.
The director general is not precluded from inquiring into consumer trade practices in the nationalised industries, but I am sure that he will wish to co-operate and co-ordinate action with the already existing consumers' councils. He will in no way wish to duplicate their work.
I expect an early working relationship to be established between the chairmen of the consultative and consumers' councils and the director general so that they can assist one another. This will be a two-way flow of information and help rather than one leading the other.
It is possible that complaints about the nationalised industries will in some cases be made direct to the director general. The exact number of these complaints will be a measure of the efficiency and the wide acceptance of the work of consumers' councils. When the director general receives them I envisage that he will immediately ask the existing bodies whether they will consider and, wherever appropriate, act on them. I hope that this will normally be the successful end of the matter. However, if that is not the case the consumers' council can consult the director general as to the action that should be taken, either through the existing legislation or through the rather wider spread of action allowed by the Fair Trading Bill.
In certain areas there will be matters on which the consumers' councils may not themselves have powers to act—for example, where central heating is installed by private contractors—or may be able to act only by using a sledgehammer to crack a nut—for example, Ministers' powers to give general directions to the boards. Then I see the director general being able to provide added help and

assistance to the work of the consumers' councils.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: Will the director general receive complaints about the consumers' councils themselves? I have found the North Thames Gas Board Consumers' Council completely incapable of discharging its function. It displays many of the characteristics that the Minister ascribed to the bad nationalised authority.

Mr. Emery: The director general can consider any complaints concerned with consumers in specific areas. It depends on the type of complaints whether, because it affects the structure of the nationalised industries, the Minister's permission would be needed before detailed action could be taken. The Government are taking action to strengthen the consumers' councils in the type of chairman we are providing. They will retail the rôle assigned to them under the Gas Act and the Electricity Act, but they need to be capable of striving, of hitting the headlines, of rejecting the cosy "You scratch my back", easy-way-out approach. That approach sometimes resulted from using certain of the people that were just thrown up by the nomination of local authorities, not always the best people from local authorities, in a way that was not accepted by consumer protection organisations. They have been condemned by such organisations. The structure of the national consumers' council under the British Gas Corporation is most carefully balanced. Half the members are the existing chairmen and the other half have been chosen with consultation right across the board. There has been no political aspect in that consideration.
I have been criticised because of the appointment of some persons who, it was felt, were inappropriate. I have wanted to see the widest spread of persons, people who would be able to bring their judgment, understanding and drive to the benefit of consumers generally.

11.50 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn: The hon. Gentleman has drawn a comparison between the new type that he wants and another type that he sharply criticised. I hope he will take the opportunity to say that he was not


referring to the other members, notably the vice-chairman of the council in question, in his very stern words about the type of chairman he did not wish to appoint.

Mr. Emery: What I have made absolutely clear is that it is our intention to try to get the best. I do not wish—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at nine minutes to Twelve o'clock.